The Wildcats, on the other hand ... there's any that are exactly his size and his skill set — and I'm grateful that we have him." Reach Kentucky men’s basketball and football reporter Ryan Black at [email protected] and follow him on X at @RyanABlack.

After a decade and a half with Kentucky, former Wildcats head coach John Calipari is no longer leading the program. Now the head coach at Arkansas, the longtime face of the team brought a few of his former players to a new school in the SEC. In his absence, former BYU head coach Mark Pope is now running the show for Kentucky.

Otega Oweh scored 21 points, Koby Brea added 18 off the bench, and No. 23 Kentucky shot 60% to blow out Wright State 103-62 in Mark Pope’s Wildcat debut.

Kentucky beat Wright State by 41 points in Mark Pope’s first game as the team’s head coach. Afterward, Pope talked about the importance of the evening.

The Kentucky Wildcats are going to shoot the three-ball a lot this season. Coach Mark Pope and his players kept saying this all off-season, but they proved that

I think this Kentucky men’s basketball team is going to be pretty good. (I think this Kentucky women’s basketball team is going to be pretty good, too. But for the sake of this column, let’s stick to the men.

Kentucky was able to take down Wright State by a score of 103-62 to get the Mark Pope era started off with a bang. In this game, Coach Pope had ten players play substantial minutes, which is a big number in college basketball.

The Mark Pope era is officially off to a winning start for the Kentucky men’s basketball program. On Monday night, the Wildcats began the 2024-25 season with a dominant 103-62 home victory against Wright State of the Horizon League.