Mark Pope is feeling the urgency at Kentucky. His first season as the Wildcats’ head coach ended with an appearance in the Sweet 16 at the NCAA Tournament and a respectable #12 ranking the final AP poll, but Pope understands that his task is to take the historic Kentucky program back to the top of college basketball.
“We want to play the hardest schedule, we want to play the best teams, we want to win the most games, we want to have the best players, we want to have the highest NIL, we want to have the coolest uniforms, we want to have the most media attention. This is Kentucky,” Pope said at his first offseason press conference.
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It must have been a little discouraging then for Pope to learn that top 2026 recruit Tyran Stokes has opted to postpone his visit to Lexington, a visit that was set to begin Thursday and last through Saturday.
Stokes, who attends Notre Dame High School in Sherman Oaks, California, is at the center of a recruiting tug-of-war involving several elite programs. Regarded as the #1 prospect in the class of 2026, the 6’7” Stokes won a gold medal with the United States at the 2023 FIBA Under-16 Americas Championship in Mexico. As part of a deliberate recruiting process, Stokes took a visit to Kansas last month, and he is planning to visit Gonzaga in the near future.
Missing out on Stokes would be a tough blow for Kentucky, which has not won a national championship since 2012 and last reached the Final Four in 2015. But Pope’s incoming class is regarded as one of the nation’s strongest by 247Sports, and it could go a long way toward helping the Wildcats re-establish themselves as a perennial powerhouse in the post-John Calipari era.
Related: Kentucky’s $200 Million Statement: Mark Pope Jokes About Massive NIL Spending
