Video: Rick Pitino Endorses Kentucky's Mark Pope Hire, Says He'll Achieve 'Greatness'

Current St. John's and former Kentucky head men's basketball coach Rick Pitino threw his support behind the school's hiring of Mark Pope as its new head coach Friday.

In a video posted on X, Pitino expressed his belief that Pope is the right man for the job at Kentucky and declared that Pope will "go on to greatness."

After longtime Kentucky head coach John Calipari decided to leave and join Arkansas, Kentucky officially hired Pope away from BYU on Friday.

The 71-year-old Pitino coached at Kentucky from 1989 to 1997, and during that time he led the Wildcats to the Final Four on three occasions and won a national championship in 1996.

Pope was part of that 1996 national title team as a player, averaging 7.6 points and 5.2 rebounds per game en route to being a second-round pick in the NBA draft.

After a six-year NBA career, Pope got into coaching and received his first head coaching opportunity in 2015 at Utah Valley.

Pope went 77-56 in four seasons at Utah Valley, taking the Wolverines to the CBI three times.

In 2019, Pope was hired as the head coach at BYU, and he would go on to spend five seasons with the Cougars, racking up a 110-52 record.

BYU reached the NCAA tourney twice under Pope, including last season when it went 23-11, but it failed to win an NCAA tournament game under Pope's guidance.

Kentucky has struggled through some NCAA tournament shortcomings in its own right in recent years, as it has not made it past the second round since 2019.

The third-seeded Wildcats were shocked by 14th-seeded Oakland in the first round of this year's tournament, which turned out to be Calipari's final game as Kentucky's head coach.

Coach Cal did some great things at Kentucky, including four Final Four appearances and a national title, but it seemed as though a change was needed amid the Wildcats' failures to go on deep tournament runs in recent years.

The fact that Pope's BYU teams didn't have much NCAA tournament success perhaps created some trepidation among the Kentucky fanbase, but Pitino attempted to allay those concerns Friday.

Pitino pointed out that big-name head coaches such as Jay Wright, Danny Hurley and Billy Donovan all had their struggles before becoming national championship-winning coaches.

Pitino hyped up Pope's coaching and recruiting ability and his love for Kentucky basketball, and he vowed that Pope would "get it done" in the form of bringing another national title to Lexington.