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Kentucky’s Mark Pope on recruiting players through transfer portal
Kentucky Wildcats men’s basketball coach Mark Pope discusses recruiting players through the transfer portal.
Since the transfer portal opened in October 2018, college basketball’s top teams have skewed older.
Former U of L and current St. John’s coach Rick Pitino said last month he does not plan to sign any freshmen this recruiting cycle, citing the changing landscape of college basketball. The compounding effects of NIL and the transfer portal remind him of his Euroleague days, where one-year contracts were a common occurrence. He aims to replace experience with experience.
“We’re not recruiting any high school basketball players,” Pitino said. “Because we’re losing Deivon (Smith), Kadary (Richmond) and Aaron (Smith). You can’t replace them with high school kids.”
While not quite as extreme, Pat Kelsey and Mark Pope have also modified their recruiting ideologies to reflect this trend.
They assembled rosters brimming with experience in hopes of immediate postseason success at Louisville and Kentucky. Both squads are top-10 in KenPom’s 2024-25 experience rankings (U of L No. 5 with a score of 3.17; UK No. 7 with a score of 3.09). In 2023-24, Louisville ranked 307th with a score of 1.07, while Kentucky ranked 196th with a score of 1.76.
Experience isn’t everything when it comes to making a deep NCAA Tournament run, of course. But it certainly doesn’t hurt.
Freshmen-led teams haven’t had a ton of success in March over the last decade or so. Duke did it in 2015 (and will look to do it again with Cooper Flagg). Kentucky made it happen with Anthony Davis, Michael Kidd-Gilchrist and Marquis Teague in 2012. Since then, COVID-19 super seniors and the transfer portal have changed the way coaches construct their rosters.
Here’s a look at how Louisville’s and Kentucky’s experienced squads compare with successful NCAA Tournament teams in recent years:
