Kentucky Basketball needs to catch a break. Mark Pope is already under pressure after failing to bring in the big name recruits the program would want to see, and his latest long haul trip seems to have come up with few indications that things might be getting better.
Pope made the long trip to Israel to see a player that he and the Kentucky program clearly rate very highly, but the product Pope saw is bound to make him perhaps a tad bit concerned about the scouting report.
Because Maccabi Tel Aviv star Marcio Santos delivered a below par performance on the day when Pope was watching, delivering zero points in the game. And to compound matters for Pope and Kentucky, a Hebrew report from a reporter at the game seemed to take shots at the program in its entirety.
On the Kentucky Sports Radio Show, the panel discussed the incident, with the words “very desperate university” used to describe Kentucky as Pope made the long visit to Israel to see what turned out to be a bust in the end.
“Santos will celebrate his 24th birthday in November and is set to receive a particulary tempting offer from a very desperate university. If he can indeed play there, he will be the second player this season to make the transition from Euro League minutes to college,” is what the report said.
The panel then discussed whether the report tried to say that Pope seemed desperate for making the terribly long flight from Lexington to Tel Aviv just to see a player who didn’t even perform well on the day, or whether this was just lost in translation from Hebrew to English.
Tough times for Pope
While there is no doubt that Santos might actually be a good investment for Kentucky, especially seeing the growth of Omer Mayer at Purdue, the only reason Mark Pope needs to go so far to recruit players for his program is because some of the best in the country aren’t committing to Kentucky.
The Wildcats most recently missed out on Tyran Stokes, who committed to Kansas, so they better get their act right with this player soon.
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