Mark Pope isn’t pretending Kentucky is penny-pinching. He’s also not willing to crown the Wildcats as college basketball’s biggest spender, even if the chatter around their roster keeps getting louder.
On The Hoops HQ Show with Seth Davis and Andy Katz, the Kentucky coach said his program is built to stay in the market - but not necessarily at the very top of it.
“Well, I think certainly our roster is going to be competitive in the market,” Pope said. “Here’s the thing, you just don’t know.
Nothing’s public, right? So it’s all speculation.”
That was the backdrop for a broader conversation about Kentucky’s roster costs, including last season’s reported $22 million figure and where this year’s group stacks up. Pope didn’t confirm those numbers and didn’t try to play along with the rumor mill. Instead, he pushed back on how inflated some of the reporting around the Wildcats can get.
“I can tell you that there was a massive amount of reporting about our roster, individual offers, contracts, everything else, that was far from where it was,” he said. “The same thing goes this year.
I’m anticipating that we’re a relatively modest roster among the top tier of college basketball this year, but I can’t say that for sure. I don’t know exactly where everybody lands.
I kind of hear the same floating information.
“The reason that I’m very uncertain about where we stand is because so much of the information that I read about us can be at times wildly inflated.”
Even with that uncertainty, Pope made it clear Kentucky is still a major player when it comes to NIL. The difference, he said, is that the Wildcats are not trying to win every bidding war.
“We’re Kentucky. We’re always going to be really, really competitive in terms of NIL,” he said.
“What we tell recruits is we’re rarely going to live in a place where we offer the most money, because that’s actually not how we want to do this. But we’re always going to be competitive.
“I need to bring in kids that want to be here for more than just the dollar value, because if that’s the only reason, this microscope is too big and you’re gonna have a hard time surviving.”
Pope said that approach has already paid off in the transfer portal, and he believes it will keep paying off. Kentucky has become one of the sport’s most reliable portal operations, and he pointed to that track record as proof the model works.
“I think we found a really nice niche,” he continued. “There are only two teams that have had top-five portal classes for three straight years, and we’re one of them. We’ve been incredibly successful in the portal.
“I think we’ve managed that really, really well, and I think we’ll continue to do it.”
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