We put out a call for national college basketball mailbag questions a couple of weeks back, and so many of you wanted to know about Kentucky, Mark Pope and John Calipari, we figured it made sense to just pull out those questions and answers separately. So here they are, while we continue to stew over the SEC’s total scheduling failure in not having the Wildcats and Razorbacks play twice this season.
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Who has a better season: Arkansas or Kentucky? — Peter B.
We still need a little more information to make that call, but both Calipari at Arkansas (that’s weird to say, right?) and Pope at Kentucky have made quite a bit of hay in rebuilding their rosters basically from scratch.
In just over a month on the job, Pope added 11 players: three freshmen and eight transfers. He secured the top two in-state recruits, both of them four-star prospects — reaffirming Travis Perry’s previous commitment and flipping Trent Noah from South Carolina — and brought top-40 BYU signee Collin Chandler with him. He scoured the portal and pulled a nice mix of size, shooting and defense in Ansley Almonor (Fairleigh Dickinson), Koby Brea (Dayton), Lamont Butler (San Diego State), Andrew Carr (Wake Forest), Brandon Garrison (Oklahoma State), Kerr Kriisa (West Virginia), Otega Oweh (Oklahoma) and Amari Williams (Drexel). That’s a top-five transfer haul, per 247Sports’ rankings.
Calipari has also made several big splashes, flipping three five-star recruits who had signed with him at Kentucky — Karter Knox, Billy Richmond and Boogie Fland — and landing four high-end transfers in Adou Thiero and Zvonimir Ivisic from UK, Jonas Aidoo (Tennessee) and Johnell Davis (Florida Atlantic). Davis was arguably the best available player in the portal, and having some continuity in Thiero and Ivisic coming with him should really help Calipari in Fayetteville. If you’re trying to win right away, it doesn’t hurt to land a top-five recruiting class and a top-five transfer class.
Calipari still needs some more depth (and could really use some more 3-point shooting) to flesh out his first Arkansas roster, and Pope still needs a quality three-level wing scorer to optimize his high-octane offense. If Pope can add BYU transfer Jaxson Robinson or North Florida transfer Chaz Lanier — or maybe even 2025 five-star Will Riley, who might reclassify and is interested in the Cats — then we might give the nod to the Cats here. If Arkansas pulls, say, Illinois star Coleman Hawkins, it’s advantage Hogs. For now, it’s pretty close to a push. Calipari is still going to be relying fairly heavily on freshmen, and these freshmen don’t look as good as the ones he just had in Lexington.
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How many years will it take for Calipari to make it to a Final Four, or even win a championship with Arkansas? – Cooper M.
Here’s the thing: He has six Final Four appearances in 32 years as a head coach at UMass, Memphis and Kentucky. Yes, he led each of those three schools to at least one Final Four — and he got the Wildcats to four of them in his first six years. But he also has just one national championship in those three-plus decades, despite truckloads of five-star talent, and he’s going on a decade now without a Final Four appearance.
I know Arkansas fans are excited about the influx of talent, but here’s where his recruiting classes ranked since his last Final Four at Kentucky: No. 1 in 2015 (lost NCAA second round next season); No. 2 in 2016 (lost Elite Eight); No. 2 in 2017 (lost Sweet 16); No. 2 in 2018 (lost Elite Eight); No. 2 in 2019 (tournament canceled, won SEC); No. 1 in 2020 (missed NCAA Tournament); No. 2 in 2021 (lost first round); No. 3 in 2022 (lost second round); No. 1 in 2023 (lost first round). Even when he tried to get older through the portal — and had national player of the year Oscar Tshiebwe for two seasons — he managed just one NCAA Tournament win.
We’d never say never about a Hall of Fame coach like Calipari, but at age 65 and so far removed from his last deep run, it feels pretty unlikely.
What grade would you give Pope thus far? What should Kentucky fans reasonably expect from the team next year? – Joseph L.
I’d call it a solid B-plus, maybe even A-minus. We still need more data on how he’ll fare in recruiting battles for five-star prospects, and his first roster still lacks a no-doubt playmaker. But getting Garrison, the former McDonald’s All-American, and Brea, the NCAA 3-point percentage leader whose final five included Duke, UNC, Kansas and Connecticut, suggests he and the staff will swim just fine in the deep end. And from his pitch-perfect messaging to his quick and aggressive work in hiring a quality staff and assembling a competitive roster, Pope has pretty much nailed the offseason so far.
GO DEEPER
Mark Pope's first recruits at Kentucky? The Wildcats' fans
Just think about how much UK fans hated the hire when news first broke and how fast many of them have since fallen in love with the guy. The tricky part is whether and how quickly he can win enough games to satisfy them. Reasonable expectations for Year 1 — especially when you start with zero players in April — is an NCAA Tournament team that has a shot at making the second weekend. That relatively low bar won’t fly for long in Lexington, but for now it ought to keep the masses believing after four straight seasons failing to get out of the first weekend.
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A couple of notes about Pope’s roster construction: One, don’t get caught up in where players are coming from. Two, there’s a whole lotta shooting already and more on the way.
Pope’s roster is surely a bit of a shock to the system after watching Calipari pile up five-stars for 15 years. Some folks might be getting antsy seeing Kentucky sign zero five-stars and instead add players from Dayton, Drexel, Fairleigh Dickinson and San Diego State. There’s some risk involved there. But consider this: Of the eight first-team All-SEC players last season, none of them were top-100 recruits in high school and six of them started at low- or mid-major college programs.
Tennessee’s Dalton Knecht (Northern Colorado), Alabama’s Mark Sears (Ohio) and UK’s Antonio Reeves (Illinois State) were the three best players in the league. Oh, and only one of the 10 consensus All-Americans last season was a top-40 recruit out of high school.
What Pope’s roster lacks in star power, it makes up for in shooting prowess. Kentucky’s eight transfers made a combined 343 of 840 3-pointers at their previous schools last season, good for 40.8 percent collectively. That would’ve ranked second nationally last season. Six of those guys made at least 20 3s and five of them shot at least 37 percent from deep, led by Brea (49.8), Kriisa (42.4) and Almonor (39.4). Not to mention the freshmen: Noah made 102 3s at 43 percent as a high school senior; Perry made more than 700 3s in his high school career and shot 42 percent last season; Chandler made 135 3s in his high school career.
Combine that kind of shooting — and the addition of Robinson or Lanier would only add to it — with an offense that ranked second nationally in 3-point attempts last season at BYU, and the Wildcats ought to be mighty fun to watch.
Why did John Welch and Orlando Antigua not follow Cal to Arkansas? – Anonymous
Welch was leaving Calipari even before Calipari left Kentucky. He’d informed Calipari he was heading to Fresno State to work for their old mutual friend, Vance Walberg, the creator of the dribble-drive motion offense that Calipari popularized at Memphis. That opportunity afforded Welch, a highly respected longtime NBA assistant, a chance to do more coaching than his position on Calipari’s staff. And it should be noted that Welch has been widely praised for his work with Kentucky’s star players last season in more of a player-development role.
Antigua not going with Calipari was the bigger surprise, as they worked together at Memphis, then Kentucky from 2008 to 2014 and again at UK from 2021 through last season. But it was a bit complicated this time. A combination of factors caused Antigua to hesitate on following his longtime boss and friend to Fayetteville: His wife didn’t want to leave Lexington, and he was due a $400,000 retention bonus if he was still on Kentucky’s staff at the end of June.
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So Antigua did everything he could to be retained. By the time Pope decided to make it a completely fresh start on his staff, Calipari had necessarily moved on with filling his staff at Arkansas. Luckily for Antigua, another former boss, Brad Underwood at Illinois, threw him a lifeline. Antigua was an assistant for the Illini from 2017 to 2021 before returning to Kentucky, and now he’s back in Champaign with a program that won the Big Ten tournament and reached the Elite Eight last season.
What can Kentucky fans reasonably expect from Travis Perry as he follows Reed Sheppard in the role of homegrown favorite? – Katie C
I’ll throw Trent Noah into that same conversation. Two kids who grew up rooting for Kentucky and played their last high school game against each other in the state final at Rupp Arena. The first thing to say here is that it’s certainly not fair to expect either of them to match Sheppard’s national freshman of the year accolades — or even close. Yes, it came as a surprise that Sheppard was that good right away, but he was a McDonald’s All-American, and neither of these guys is.
But both can really play. Both are legitimate SEC-level players. And the good news is they both project to be multi-year contributors at Kentucky. That’s not to say one or both of them can’t contribute something immediately, especially given their shooting ability and how much Pope’s offense values shooting. The hunch here, though, is they’ll both be role players in Year 1.
Noah is probably most ready to help right away, given his strong, 6-foot-6 frame, but Perry is a savvy scorer and those guys often find their way onto the floor. MaxPreps recently updated its national high school record book, and Perry’s name is all over it after a six-year prep career: No. 2 in made 3s (712) and made field goals (1,918), No. 7 in points (5,481), No. 8 in steals (650) and No. 10 in made free throws (933). Call me crazy, but I suspect Pope can probably figure out how to use that guy.
(Top photos of John Calipari and Mark Pope: Wesley Hitt / Getty Images; and Clare Grant / USA Today)
