The first priority is winning Tuesday night against LSU, followed by a victory in the regular-season finale at Missouri on Saturday. From there, all eyes are on the SEC Tournament and March Madness to follow. Can Mark Pope lead this Kentucky team on a postseason run? We’re about to find out.
Whether you’re ready for it or not, though, the process of building next year’s roster will begin in the coming weeks — or even days, to some extent. Conference tournaments are here, which means teams’ seasons are about to come to a close. That means the transfer portal is about to go nuclear, players making their future intentions known to make themselves available — even if the official window opens March 24 and closes on April 22. From there, you’ll get visits and commitments all the way through May before players arrive on campus for summer workouts in June.
How does he see everything else shaking out? The hope is to add a couple of ‘superstars’ to that mix while bringing back ‘really, really important pieces.’
“In terms of the roster in the future, we have some really, really important pieces that we’re excited to have back next year, and kind of have a foundation of guys that know what we do, how we do it, what we do in the locker room, what we do at shootaround, what our daily cadence is like,” Pope said Monday night. “We have three incredibly talented rookies coming in so far — and we’ll see how that high school recruiting finishes up. Then we’ll be really, really aggressive in the portal at a couple of positions to bring in a couple superstars.
That’s the balance we’re looking for, to have some guys that have staying power that can be here multiple years. It’s a couple of really talented freshmen, a couple really talented veterans that come in and understand what Kentucky is all about. It’s probably all three of those prongs that are really important to put together a great roster.”
Pope was asked a follow-up question about getting and staying older, potentially avoiding young talent the way Rick Pitino said his St. John’s program would do moving forward after seeing the current landscape of college basketball. His response? He doesn’t agree.
Adding guys like Johnson, Moreno and Lewis are crucial, raising the talent level while bringing in established veterans to help ease the transition process. It’s all about finding the right balance, not going too heavy on youth or experience, but mixing both.