"Nobody else in college basketball does that": Mark Pope's wife Lee Anne gets special shoutout from former Kentucky star over sweet gesture

It seems coach Mark Pope’s wife, Lee Anne Pope, has some fans over in Kentucky—her husband’s new job. Former Wildcat Rex Chapman shared his admiration for Lee Anne in a recent video that surfaced on social media.

In the video, Chapman referred to her known practice of baking cookies for rival players as something unique in college basketball, saying, “Nobody else in college basketball does that.” Chapman further said:

“Who does that? Mark Pope’s wife does that.”

Mark Pope stepped in as the new coach of the Kentucky Wildcats after John Calipari left for Arkansas, having spent more than a decade at the helm of the Lexington school.

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The Popes were most recently over in Utah, where Pope was the coach of the BYU Cougars for five years. While at BYU, Pope carried the Cougars twice to the NCAA Tournament and once to the National Invitational Tournament quarterfinals.

He will be hoping to replicate the level of success he had at Kentucky as a player in the mid-1990s when he was a member of the 1996 national championship team.

How will the Mark Pope era look at Kentucky?

There were some worries that Pope would clear out the house, and bring in players from BYU through the transfer portal. In his opening press conference on Sunday afternoon, he made it clear that he wouldn’t. Here’s what he had to say about it:

“We’re talking to all the guys on the current team, all the guys that were being recruited, and just about every single person in the portal, we’re going to find the guys that fit here and the way we play and the guys that understand what a gift it is to play at the University of Kentucky.”

Mark Pope’s main focus is not on bringing in his former players but on having student-athletes who understand the privilege of being a Wildcat. He also pointed out the need to bring the school up to speed on the analytics side of the game and to become a bigger player in the transfer portal and the NIL game.

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Edited by R. Elahi