Rick Pitino knows Mark Pope as well as anyone. The former Kentucky coach brought Pope to UK as a transfer from Washington. He made him captain of the UK’s 1996 national championship team. He has been a mentor to his college coaching career.

When it was announced Friday that Pope had accepted the job as Kentucky’s new basketball coach, Pitino released a video congratulating his former player and lauding him as a coach who will “get it done” for the Wildcats.

Afterward, I talked to Pitino about his relationship with Pope and how he feels UK’s new coach will approach the specifics of the job.

Question: Tell me about when you first met Mark when he was transferring into the program. What was your impression of him and what kind of impression did he make on you? Not just as a player but as a person during his time at Kentucky.

Pitino: “I went out there and he lived in a beautiful area. It was called Bellevue, and it was overlooking Puget Sound. And it was a magnificent home just because it was on a cliff. And he spoke so highly of being where he was. And I said, ‘Well, why do you want to transfer?’ and he said, ‘I could not go back there because they fired my coach.’ And, you know, I kind of looked at the record a little bit and said, well, maybe the coach was not deserving to be fired, but maybe it was understandable. And it just struck me that Mark was so loyal.

So we we felt that he’d be great for the program. We thought he had the work ethic that we were looking for. And he had everything that we wanted at that position that we thought he could play both the four (position) and five. And he just impressed us so much as a person. When we checked with the other coaches at school, they said his work ethic is not to be believed.”

Q: When you were coaching him, did you think that he would be a future coach someday?

Pitino: “I knew he was a great leader. You know, they all have their heart at that time set on playing, right? So no, I didn’t. When I think when you look at guys, I could see Travis Ford maybe, because he wasn’t going to be an NBA player. But with Mark, I thought he’d have a long career either in the NBA or playing overseas.”

Q: His teammates have talked about how competitive he was as a player. Can you just talk about that his competitive nature?

Pitino: “He played every second. Like he would post up, get around defensively. He played every second of practice. And you know, for our team, I always felt that (the 1996 national championship team) was one of the great teams of all time, and without Mark, that everybody looked up to as a selfless leader, I don’t know if we could have accomplished what we accomplished.

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