SOUTHEASTERN CONFERENCE MEN'S BASKETBALL TIPOFF MEDIA DAYS

October 14, 2026

Mark Pope

Kentucky Wildcats

Men's Media Day Press Conference

MARK POPE: We are starting week 17 of our time together as a team, and I love coaching this team. It's a really fun group to coach because they're fast learners. We're excited about this SEC season. This is going to be the third year in a row where the SEC is the best conference in the country by a long shot.

We're excited about our non-conference schedule. Again, one of the toughest non-conference schedules in the country. Our schedule overall is going to be challenging. That's what we sign up for every single year, on purpose.

We're excited to welcome J Batt into the family. He came onto campus at a full sprint and hasn't taken a breath yet. It's been exhilarating to work with him.

We are enjoying growing this team. We built this team roster construction-wise starting with bookends of lead guards and centers. Center is a uniquely important position for us. These lead guard, point guard positions have been a place where we struggled the last couple years with injuries.

We feel like we started there, added a ton of length and skill. We are walking into the season with a whole bunch of confidence and optimism about what we can grow into.

I think this team on the offensive side of the ball is long and skilled. It can really shoot. It's probably the best shooting team I've ever had.

On the defensive side, we'll again count on our length and our connectedness and our IQ as a team. I think we have a chance to be a great team defense. We're going to rely on that about our communication and connectedness on defense. We can't wait to get started.

I'll take questions.

Q. You added John Pelphrey to your staff this off-season. Alum of Kentucky. What do you think he brings to your staff?

MARK POPE: John brings a lot. I've known him for a long time. We were entertaining discussions all throughout the course of the summer to see if this would be a perfect fit, which it's turned out to be.

Clearly he's been a really successful head coach in the SEC. Incredibly successful assistant coach in the SEC. A terrific player himself at Kentucky.

He knows Kentucky and loves Kentucky maybe as much as any human being on the planet. People are familiar with the story, these facts might be a little bit fuzzy, I'll let John verify. At some point early on in his Kentucky career, he was diagnosed with some type of possible heart issue. To continue on playing, he had to get a waiver signed by his parents.

The conversation went something like, Dad, I want to play.

His dad saying, I can't think of a better place to die than on a Rupp Arena floor.

That's the type of devotion they have. That might seem sensational to people outside of Kentucky, but to Kentuckians, we understand what that means. And it's something real to us, and we feel that. He's a great representative of all of that. His jersey is up in the rafters. In his first week, he's already had a great impact on our staff.

Q. We know Momcilovic is a great shooter. How do you see him expanding in your system?

MARK POPE: He's shown a lot on the offensive end. Clearly he had one of the most prolific shooting seasons in the history of college basketball last year. So his gravity is immense. He's actually very, very skilled and capable in the post. I think we'll be able to buy space for him to work in the post.

He's becoming an elite-level cutter. He's made massive strides in his assist-turnover ratio since he's been with us this summer. He's grown in those spaces.

T.J. does such an extraordinary job at Iowa State building his team defense. Milan comes to us as a very highly schooled defensive player. He's bringing some of that to us, where we're seeing him have an impact on our team also.

Q. You've experienced Kentucky basketball both as a player and now as a head coach. What is something about the expectations that surround this program that you understood as a player but see from a completely different point of view now that you're leading the program?

MARK POPE: I get that question a lot, the difference between being a player and coach in terms of understanding Kentucky and the expectations.

I don't think it's any different. We felt and embraced and were motivated by the pressure as players there. If you remember, Coach had been here for six or seven years, and there was grumbling that there was no national championship to show for it. We came into the season understanding that it was kind of win it all or bust, which essentially it is every year at Kentucky. It's the same as a coach.

One of the things that makes Kentucky so special, as an athlete you are dying to find a place where the pressure is. That's where you want to be. You want the pressure moment. It's what you're looking for, searching for.

It's fun to go out and play a pickup game in the backyard where it doesn't matter. What you live for is being on the biggest stage under the brightest lights. You get that every single minute of every single day at Kentucky.

Q. The program announced yesterday you hiring Alfred Aboya. You weren't quoted in the release. Could you expand on what you think he brings to the staff.

MARK POPE: Yeah, Aboya is a tremendous addition to the staff. He's currently the head coach of the Cameroon national team. He's been the head coach of the NBA Academy in Senegal.

His contacts throughout Africa and Europe with African players are extraordinary. He was one of the all-time winningest players at UCLA, went to three straight Final Fours. That's saying a lot at UCLA.

More importantly than all of that, he's one of the best people in the business. It was interesting. As we went through this process over the course of the summer, I probably reached out to 15 different people kind of league-wide. He was an assistant coach in the G League for the Herd. He is universally -- I've had people call me back faster about him than they have on any other topic just to give a ringing endorsement of who he is as a human being.

So far in his first few days with us, that certainly is showing to be correct. He adds another dimension to our staff that's going to be really important for us long-term. He's going to have an immediate impact with our guys on the floor. He's a big, he coaches bigs, he's really going to help with our front line, but also on the recruiting front, the X's and O's front. He's got great acumen. He's really going to help us.

Q. Coach Aboya, why was international recruiting such a top priority when you did go through this extensive coaching search?

MARK POPE: It's been interesting. We're still learning. We kind of played this out as long as we possibly could. As we see how the NCAA is interpreting professional contracts and eligibility for European players, we haven't got to the end of that road, but certainly it appears like there's still going to be some real runway to at least recruit top young talent in Europe.

As that's become more apparent... We were nervous earlier in the summer that the door might be closed a lot more than we thought it would. It seems like there's still some space there.

He's going to have a huge impact there. I spent probably more time as a head coach than any head coach in America in Africa. Several visits to Mali, Madagascar, Tanzania, Egypt. I love that country. It's an immense amount of talent and great people throughout Africa. The basketball is growing there so fast. It's an exciting space for the basketball community worldwide to continue to explore.

Q. Kentucky is projected to finish seventh in the SEC this season. What are you seeing from your team that puts them in the top half of this conference?

MARK POPE: To be honest, we don't spend a lot of time on polls. We spend all our time on the work that we do, the wins that we earned.

We are very, very focused on the only opinion mattering is the opinion in our locker room. That's really important for all teams in all sports. It's really, really important for our team at Kentucky, for us to become what we can become.

The polls will change. They change every week. I think our football team, which is just crushing it right now, it is so fun right now, just tell you how smart the polls are. They dropped them out of the top 25 after they went on the road and beat an SEC team on the road. The guys came back and proved it because the polls didn't matter to them either. Had another epic win against our counterparts at LSU.

Q. Alex Wilkins, what has he brought? There can be an adjustment period sometimes for a player, especially when they come to the best league in the country. What are your expectations for his learning curve? What does he offer you guys offensively?

MARK POPE: It is such a joy. I'm telling you, this team is such a joy to coach. I can prove that to you because the unthinkable happens. As we have practice and then we go through all the business of the day, at some point during the day or evening or late night we get to go review all the film. Without fail, there are a play or two, something that happens in practice, where I'm yelling at a coach down the hall or calling them on the phone late at night, Did you see this? This is amazing. These guys are picking this up so fast. It's been a joy.

I'm giving you this background on Alex. Our team learns. Like, they are learning. They are fast learners. It gives you immense confidence as a coach that whatever we face, our guys are going to learn. We're desperate now to start playing some other teams so we know where we are.

Alex fits exactly in that category. When you have a player that's uber talented, and he's incredibly creative and talented and wild (smiling), there's a process. We have to be cautious coaching him because he needs some constraints, some 100% constraints so he can build against, but they cannot take away his brilliant creativity where he can do things other players don't do well.

It's a process with him that's going to be really exciting. I know exactly who he is going to be this season. He's going to have some games where this is the best player in college basketball, some moments that are head-scratchers. As long as he's trending into the place that his discipline releases his creativity, we're working in the right space.

All growth takes time, but his ceiling is high.

Q. What has Zoom brought to the group? Has he been the player that you expected he would be?

MARK POPE: Yeah, Zoom is going to be a terrific player for us this year. The magic of Zoom is his ability to connect players. I've told this a couple times. We spent the first nine weeks of the summer together, then we finish our summer with a team retreat. It was amazing to watch in those three days on the retreat.

Anytime you're with each other 24/7 as an entire group, there's moments where guys kind of fray on the edges, slide away for a moment, whatever. Zoom, player by player by player, I watched him go grab those guys and bring 'em back into the mix with the group.

His ability as a leader and a connector of people is a terrific strength. He's going to have a big impact. I haven't mentioned one things he does on the court yet. We're going to see all that through the course of the season. He's got a physicality and toughness. Got an ability to score at eight feet that's pretty special. His vision is growing.

He is learning a new way to play the game as a pop-roll guy more than a pound-the-rock guy. He's doing it really well and humbly.

His connectedness from day one to the last day of this season, hopefully into the month of April, is going to be the fact that he keeps this team connected.

Thanks, guys.