Mark Pope has wasted no time building the roster at Kentucky since accepting the head coaching job this past month. Pope has spent a ton of time of the recruiting trail and it has paid off with the Wildcats now having 10 players committed for the 2024-25 season.
Surprisingly, none of the new additions have come from BYU, where Pope coached before taking over in Lexington. That has allowed him the opportunity to grab players from all over as he gets to build a team based around the style he wants to play.
Speaking on the College Hoops Today podcast with Jon Rothstein, Pope pointed to experience as being the biggest difference between his current Kentucky roster and last year’s BYU team.
“This group that we’ve assembled has actually got way more experience than the team we had last year at BYU,” he said. “These guys are proven quantities, have been to the NCAA Tournament multiple times, hit game-winning shots to get into the national championship game. Veteran guys that have played for a long time at the highest level.
“What’s been really fun is we kind of developed our style the way we like to approach the game. It was terrifying but it’s turned out to be a real blessing that we got to start from scratch here where we got to kind of hand pick guys that we project as fitting perfectly into the way that we play and also some ways we really want to expand the genre of game that we played last year. I feel great about our roster right now. We have a couple really, really importance pieces that we still have to fit in, but on paper I love us.”
Former San Diego State guard Lamont Butler, who hit the game-winning shot in the 2022 Final Four to lift the Aztecs to the national title game, is just one of the many additions who bring a bevy of experience to Kentucky.
The Wildcats a pair of sharp shooters in Kerr Kriisa (West Virginia) and Koby Brea (Dayton) as well as a former top 50 recruit in Oklahoma State center Brandon Garrison.
It is a senior-laden group that is battle tested when it comes to the NCAA Tournament, an area where Kentucky had struggled of late. The Wildcats are have not made it past the second round since 2019.
As Mark Pope looks to lead them back there, this roster is certainly a solid start, but he isn’t done yet. Kentucky can still add up to three more players for the 2024-25 season.
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