The 2026-27 season isn't off to the best start for Mark Pope and the Kentucky basketball team. After a too-close-for-comfort win over James Madison, the Wildcats were blown out by Kansas in a game where they looked lost and rarely looked event competitive.
After the game, Big Blue Nation immediately expressed their displeasure at Pope and his struggles against good teams. Last season's bad outings against Michigan State, Gonzaga, and several others are still fresh, and the performance against the Jayhawks brought the memories back, and calls for him to be fired were renewed.
Fans have a number of beefs with Pope, including the lack of recruiting talent, which naturally led many to wonder if Kentucky should have kept former coach John Calipari
around. They should reconsider that, though.
Obviously, the recruiting results were better under Coach Cal, with top recruiting classes more often than not. On the court, however, the results were still mixed.
In Calipari's last four seasons as coach, Kentucky did win 20 games three times, but were 9-16 in 2020-21. Postseason success eluded him over those years, though. In the last four years at the helm, the Wildcats missed the NCAA Tournament once, didn't make it out of the first round twice, and lost in round two the other time.
As the path to winning national championships shifted to having veteran talent, Calipari's freshman-led squads couldn't get wins in March, and dissatisfaction set in with fans. Getting players to the NBA seemed to be a bigger focus than winning championships, and he famously downplayed the SEC Tournament as the Wildcats weren't able to find success there either. During the regular season, the results were certainly better under Cal, but in the postseason, Pope has gotten better results than Calipari did over his last five years in Lexington.
Pope's inability to get the best players remains a problem, and his failures on the court are an even bigger problem. In the end, Kentucky could move on, but that doesn't mean keeping Calipari was the right decision either.
This article originally appeared on UK Wildcats Wire: Mark Pope's wrongs don't make keeping John Calipari right: Opinion
