Rick Pitino with Mark Pope (UK Athletics Photo)
Former Kentucky coach Rick Pitino not only attended Big Blue Madness last weekend but he also attended a UK practice and spent time talking to coach Mark Pope’s players.
Here is what he said via a video shared by UK athletics:
“I wish you all great success. As you may know, Mark played on probably one of the greatest teams ever to play college basketball. We had like seven guys who played in the pros, but every day that we practiced, our second team could beat the first team. There’s no such thing. And they were all different personalities. Totally different.
“Ron Mercer, who is over here, was a freshman and second-rated player, and we had a young man named Antoine Walker who was the fourth pick in the draft and Antoine was annoying to me every single day because he would come up to me during practice and say, ‘Coach, you better get him off of him, he’s going to lose his confidence.’
“And nobody could guard Antoine but your coach was a lot different than the rest of the guys because he was without ego. He was our leader. He was a Rhodes Scholar candidate. He was supposed to be a doctor and he was just the glue that kept the team together. Because you have all these egos and he kept us all together because of one reason: he was the hardest worker. Nobody worked as hard as him. Nobody on the team. Never had a bad day. Brought it every single day. Never was moody. Think about this: everybody has a bad day. He didn’t. He just brought the energy every single day. A unique characteristic of any athlete.
“And you’re all wearing this Kentucky uniform and you’ll feel it with the crowd but you won’t really know how important the uniform is until you come back and leave because it’s special. There are very few places in all of basketball like Kentucky and you look up at those banners and you realize what’s important to them.
“So you represent more than just being on a basketball team. You represent a state and you represent every Kentucky fan in the world that lives in other states. It means so much to them and it’s going to mean so much to you. But you’ve got to try to match your leader because when I tell you he’s the hardest worker, nobody is like him.”
3 Responses
Interesting remarks about the 1996 team, players, & the unique leadership of Pope.
I think it’s wonderful that Pope is a bridge to initiate mending the Pitino-UK bond which led to one of the 2 greatest stretches of UK BB history!
Two of the players have an innate ability to comprehend the extent & depth of how Rick described UK. The others will become like Pope if they embrace the path he pays out for them & they give their all FOR the TEAM
Rick Pitino led us to 3 straight title games.
I’m going to start a drive to erect a statue of him outside of Rupp Arena.
Jimmy can I count on you to chip in?
Awesome idea! He & Rupp hold the best 3 to 5 year records in UK history.
The 1998 team is the product of Pitino recruiting, developing, molding into a TEAM a group of players who INCLUDED multiple players born & raised in KY!