There’s really no sugarcoating it: This was a brutal day for Mark Pope and the Kentucky Basketball program.
When news broke that Tyran Stokes would announce his decision Tuesday night during ESPN’s NBA Tip-off, it was widely believed that the Kansas Jayhawks would be the choice (and, shocker, they were).
That didn’t stop Pope and his staff from finding a way to make things worse.
First, Pope was caught liking a tweet about how massive it would be for the Kentucky fanbase if he could land Stokes.
Not something you do in any scenario. Either it gets the fanbase’s hopes up unnecessarily, or it kind of spoils Stokes’ big moment if he had picked the Cats.
Unfortunately, assistant coach Mo Williams managed to look even worse when he tweeted this reply to Stokes’ announcement tweet (it was later deleted).
Not only does it have the same negative impact as Pope’s ‘like’ did, but it’s also an NCAA recruiting violation to publicly message an uncommitted recruit.
Ooof.
But the real haymaker was this note from KSR’s Jack Pilgrim that Stokes signed his non-revenue share agreement with Kansas around the time he visited Lexington in April.
You know, when everyone and their grandma were saying Kansas had Stokes, yet Pope continued to go all-in and likely missed out on big-time transfer portal players because of it…just like they did with Caleb Holt.
Stokes played Kentucky, and Pope was happy to oblige.
Just flat-out embarrassing to host a major recruit while he’s working out his contract with another school.
Oh, but the fun’s not over there.
You probably noticed how Kentucky announced a commitment from James Madison transfer Justin McBride earlier. That’s all fine and dandy.
The problem is that the school announced the commitment right before Stokes’ announcement. So what should have been an incredible moment for McBride and his family was completely overshadowed by the No. 1 overall player in high school hoops making his own announcement. This was a special moment that should have been celebrated away from Stokes’ announcement. Instead, it was lost in the shuffle almost as soon as it happened.
Today was always going to be a painful one for Kentucky Basketball. But somehow, this staff made it even worse.