The Champions Classic gives annual intel on four college hoops teams that usually ma Kentuckytter — check out CJ Moore’s resulting film breakdown on Duke, Kansas, and Michigan State — and that means worthwhile hints on the season at large as well. This year, the Champions Classic has confirmed an enormous shift in college basketball fandom.
Hating Kentucky isn’t cool or fun anymore because Kentucky’s coach is both. Mark Pope is relentlessly likable, which means Kentucky basketball has become likable. Adjust accordingly.
Now, “cool” doesn’t work in every sense of the word, not for a 6-foot-10 guy who gives off the energy of a chemistry teacher towering over his students while delivering gentle words of encouragement. Pope is Mr. Vargas in “Fast Times at Ridgemont High,” but with a dry-erase board and no hair.
Just as Vargas was the one teacher who could get Jeff Spicoli enthused about learning something, Pope got his thrown-together first team to figure out how to beat Duke — arguably the most talented outfit in the land — 77-72 on Tuesday in Atlanta. Pope is a former Rhodes scholarship candidate and Columbia medical student who can obviously teach as well as learn.
That might not sound cool, and in fact, his wife, Lee Anne, addressed that very word in Brendan Quinn’s profile of Pope, saying: “You know, somebody said to me, ‘He’s goofy.’ But no. He’s not goofy. He’s just — in a world where everyone is cool, he is not too cool. And there’s a big difference. He’s brilliant. He’s authentic. And he’s going to outwork everyone. I know it.”
But authenticity and perspective are cool, and they spring forth from Pope, who told Quinn that if being the coach at Kentucky is “everything you are,” you won’t succeed at it. That story centers on Pope’s relationships with his wife and four daughters, adding to a public glimpse of Pope that makes more fascinating his new job in service of the most ferociously passionate fan base in … American sports?
It adds to an interesting time for the blue bloods, too. Pope beat Jon Scheyer, who is embarking on a critical third season as the friendly, soft-spoken successor to hated (by non-Duke fans) basketball overlord Mike Krzyzewski. Non-North Carolina fans had very few nice things to say about Roy “Aw Shucks” Williams — Hubert Davis is much easier to like. Bill Self, himself an “aw shucks” purveyor extraordinaire, is the only old head left. As any non-Kansas fan will tell you, it won’t be hard to find someone less grating on the nerves than he is.
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