Lee Anne Pope has always been an enthusiastic supporter of her husband, Mark Pope, and his Kentucky basketball team and was again in Madison Square Garden Tuesday. (Vicky Graff Photo)
Cameron Mills remembers having a conversation with Lee Anne Pope last season asking her how UK coach Mark Pope, her husband and Mills’ former teammate at UK, was doing after a Kentucky loss.
“I told her I would text him like all of our teammates do to constantly encourage him but what should I say and do after a loss and ask if he is okay or not,” Mills said. “I knew what to say when I was with him all the time when we were teammates (on the UK basketball team) but now I am not with him so what does he need to hear from me and what can we say to encourage him..
“I loved her response. I showed her what I wrote to him. At one point, she said, ‘That’s good.’ But then she said, ‘Cameron, just remember that’s the biggest shoulders in the world out there on that court right now, and this is out at practice.’ I think that’s the thing that for her to understand that, and for her to allow him to dedicate so much time to these players, for her to make these players her boys too, it’s just it’s a situation where the two of them together are more powerful than one of them, and I think both of them would admit that.”
They would. Mark Pope often admits she’s perfect for him — and he obviously needs her support after UK’s losses to Louisville and Michigan have left him searching for answers.
His four daughters often are at games and UK functions. He had his youngest daughter come to a postgame press conference, sit on the podium and talk to the media after a win this season.
“It’s just special to watch them work together as a mom and a dad, as a husband and a wife, for the good of this program,” Mills said. “Mark talks non stop about this program to his girls, to his wife. When he was in the NBA, when he was at Columbia Medical School, he talked about Kentucky.
“When I first met his daughters, they knew who I was. They knew my name. I don’t look like I used to look right, and yet they recognized me and came up to me, and said, ‘Oh, you’re Cameron.’ And I got hugs from all four of them. And I’m like, ‘’Do I know you all?’ But he talks non stop about his time here and I doubt that will ever change.
