{"id":139448,"date":"2025-08-12T10:39:12","date_gmt":"2025-08-12T10:39:12","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/139448\/"},"modified":"2025-08-12T10:39:12","modified_gmt":"2025-08-12T10:39:12","slug":"rick-pitino-discusses-upcoming-matchup-with-kentucky-and-mark-pope","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/139448\/","title":{"rendered":"Rick Pitino discusses upcoming matchup with Kentucky and Mark Pope"},"content":{"rendered":"<p class=\"duet--article--dangerously-set-cms-markup duet--article--standard-paragraph _1nfb3k4i _16w9vov1 _16w9vov0 ls9zuh1\">The Kentucky Wildcats have a tough non-conference schedule once again this season. With plenty of top-tier programs, including North Carolina, Michigan State, and Gonzaga, they will also welcome a newer opponent to the schedule in the St. John\u2019s Red Storm.<\/p>\n<p class=\"duet--article--dangerously-set-cms-markup duet--article--standard-paragraph _1nfb3k4i _16w9vov1 _16w9vov0 ls9zuh1\">Led by Rick Pitino now, the Johnnies have taken NYC by storm. With another impressive roster this season, Pitino will look to make some noise against not only the Cats but his former player and team captain in Mark Pope.<\/p>\n<p class=\"duet--article--dangerously-set-cms-markup duet--article--standard-paragraph _1nfb3k4i _16w9vov1 _16w9vov0 ls9zuh1\">In a <a href=\"https:\/\/youtu.be\/2oDE8n9WcCc?si=a6ip86wMicGwUTYS\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">recent interview with Jon Rothstein<\/a>, the college basketball guru asked the legendary coach what coaching against Pope will be like. He compared it to a similar feeling to coaching against his son.<\/p>\n<p class=\"duet--article--dangerously-set-cms-markup duet--article--standard-paragraph _1nfb3k4i _16w9vov1 _16w9vov0 ls9zuh1\">\u201cI think it\u2019s no different than coaching against your son. Obviously, it stirs different emotions,\u201d said Pitino. \u201cI think anytime you play Kentucky, what I\u2019ve always called the Roman Empire of college basketball, you know you\u2019re going to go against great talent.<\/p>\n<p class=\"duet--article--dangerously-set-cms-markup duet--article--standard-paragraph _1nfb3k4i _16w9vov1 _16w9vov0 ls9zuh1\">\u201cCertainly, Mark Pope is one of the bright young coaches in the game, and really has a great offensive mind, but it\u2019ll be great to play against the University of Kentucky. I\u2019m really looking forward to the game.\u201d<\/p>\n<p class=\"duet--article--dangerously-set-cms-markup duet--article--standard-paragraph _1nfb3k4i _16w9vov1 _16w9vov0 ls9zuh1\">Atlanta is going to be a madhouse for this matchup. Will Coach Pope and the Cats prevail against a likely top-10 squad in college basketball? To do so, the UK head coach and his opponent will have to fight through some big emotions in what will be an emotional matchup overall.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The Kentucky Wildcats have a tough non-conference schedule once again this season. With plenty of top-tier programs, including&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":139449,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[44],"tags":[1339,1541,1317,1337,1338,62,67,132,68],"class_list":{"0":"post-139448","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-ncaa-basketball","8":"tag-basketball","9":"tag-kentucky-wildcats-basketball","10":"tag-ncaa","11":"tag-ncaa-basketball","12":"tag-ncaabasketball","13":"tag-sports","14":"tag-united-states","15":"tag-unitedstates","16":"tag-us"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@us\/115015369914692566","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/139448","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=139448"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/139448\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/139449"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=139448"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=139448"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=139448"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}