Mark Pope says he held 30-minute individual meetings with all of his players every week during summer

Before his team returns to campus this week after a quick summer break, Mark Pope made a pit stop in North Carolina to talk alongside some of college basketball’s greatest minds.

Pope was in attendance as one of the primary speakers at the annual Larry Shyatt Coaching Clinic on Wednesday, which was held at UNC Charlotte. He (along with Michigan State’s Tom Izzo) even opened as one of the first speakers at the event, which continues on Thursday and has drawn in hundreds of coaches and basketball minds from all levels of college hoops. You won’t find many events in the country where these kinds of top-end coaches are giving their thoughts to a crowd — it was closed off to the public for a reason.

However, a handful of national media members were able to find a way in, most notably the Field of 68’s Jeff Goodman and ESPN’s Fran Fraschilla, who shared a handful of updates throughout the day. Pope had a few good lines, none better than his joke about learning offensive sets from people on social media. But another stood out.

According to Goodman, Pope shared that he held 30-minute individual meetings with all of his players every week during the summer. That’s a ton of time dedicated to off-court one-on-ones. Kentucky has 14 scholarship players on the roster, although Andrija Jelavić only just arrived on campus. Even still, meeting with all 13 players for 30 minutes every week quickly adds up to 6.5 hours per week.

That us thinking. What exactly happens in these meetings? Does the talk revolve around basketball, personal life, school, a little bit of everything? Does he mix in the walk-ons for these meetings, too? We joke that Pope rarely sleeps, but evidence continues to pile up proving that he might actually not. I don’t even want to imagine what his day-to-day schedule looks like.

But if he truly was holding that many meetings every single week over the last few months, the bond between player and coach will be quite strong for the Kentucky Wildcats in 2025-26.