Mark Pope makes his claim for how Kentucky is doing better than the end of John Calipari era

For the sixth straight year, Kentucky Basketball has failed to reach the Elite Eight of the NCAA Tournament after getting blasted by Iowa State in the Round of 32. Mark Pope has been responsible for two of those seasons, while John Calipari was responsible for the previous four. And while Calipari is now having success at Arkansas, it has to be pointed out that he authored one of the worst four-year stretches in Kentucky Basketball history before Pope took over.

That included a loss to 15-seed Saint Peter’s as a 2-seed, a loss to 14-seed Oakland as a 3-seed, and a 9-16 disaster campaign during COVID. Kentucky also had just one NCAA Tournament game and one SEC Tournament game during that span, making for a stretch so bad that even Calipari himself knew he needed to leave for a restart elsewhere. That made it pretty easy for Pope to do a better job in his two seasons thus far, even if both still ended with double-digit loss seasons and a lot more questions than answers.

During his Monday radio show, Pope made sure to point out the “progress” the program has made in the two years following Calipari’s departure. “I’m not talking about meeting the standard of where we’re trying to get. Clearly, we did not do that, but we are making progress.

In the four years before we got here, we won one game in Nashville. In the last two years, we’ve won three games in Nashville. “And clearly, the seed hasn’t been as good, but in the last two years, we lost to the No.