Congratulation: Kentucky Coach Mark Pope Announced His 46 Years Birthday Topday” You Welcome All….
The commitment to Kentucky by Fairleigh Dickinson forward Ansley Almonor as a transfer Thursday morning brings the number of scholarship players for Mark Pope’s first UK team up to 11. A 6-foot-7, 219-pound forward, Almonor is a career 38.5 percent 3-point shooter. The product of Spring Valley, New York, a senior-to-be, should give Pope an ideal option when the new UK coach wishes to deploy a “small ball” 4 man.
The commitment to Kentucky by Fairleigh Dickinson forward Ansley Almonor as a transfer Thursday morning brings the number of scholarship players for Mark Pope’s first UK team up to 11. A 6-foot-7, 219-pound forward, Almonor is a career 38.5 percent 3-point shooter. The product of Spring Valley, New York, a senior-to-be, should give Pope an ideal option when the new UK coach wishes to deploy a “small ball” 4 man.
Like his college coach at UK, Rick Pitino, Pope is a believer in using his bench. Consider: ▪ Over his prior two seasons as head man at BYU, Pope has not had one player average 30 minutes of playing time a game. ▪ For both of the past two years, Pope deployed a 10-man rotation. In 2022-23, BYU’s 10 rotation players averaged between 10.2 and 29 minutes of action a game. This past season, the range of average playing time for the Cougars’ top 10 players was between 10 and 27 minutes.
used a seven-player rotation that saw six of the seven players appear in all 40 games. The six leading scorers averaged between 26.1 (Darius Miller) and 32.6 (Marquis Teague) minutes a game. UK’s 2016-17 Elite Eight team used a seven-man rotation in which the top four players — Malik Monk (32.1), Isaiah Briscoe (30.1), Bam Adebayo (30.1) and De’Aaron Fox (29.6) — all played roughly 30 minutes a game. In Oscar Tshiebwe’s national player of the year season in 2021-22, Kentucky employed a seven-man rotation in which the top players all averaged between 17 and 32 minutes a game. Moving forward, it appears that Kentucky and Calipari are heading down very different paths in terms of roster construction. Now that he is the boss Hog at Arkansas, Calipari apparently wants to double down on the small rosters. On a recent episode of the “Ways to Win” podcast hosted by ex-Oregon State coach Craig Robinson, Calipari said he only wants “eight or nine” scholarship players on his rosters moving forward. Calipari sited the prevalence of players transferring in the current era and said he saw no reason to coach developmental players you would essentially be getting ready for their next school. Pope and Kentucky would seem to be making exactly the opposite bet. If UK going forward will be using 10-player rotations, that could potentially create more opportunity for players who are not ready to be one-and-done pros to carve out meaningful reserve roles for the Wildcats early in their careers rather than just sitting the bench and watching the stars play 30 minutes plus. The question to be answered is whether, under Pope, might players the caliber of, say, Charles Matthews or Bryce Hopkins — to name two Calipari-era Cats who played sparingly at UK as freshmen only to become multi-year standouts after transferring to Michigan and Providence, respectively — log enough meaningful time as part of big rotations early in their Kentucky careers that they are comfortable staying in Lexington to do their multi-year development at UK?
