Big 12 Basketball: Ranking all 14 head coaches in 2023 after realignment

12. Mark Pope – BYU

Pope had quite the playing career long before coaching, winning Pac-10 Freshman of the Year at Washington and a national championship a few years later at Kentucky. He spent half a decade playing in the NBA and began his coaching career on Mark Fox’s staff at Georgia over a decade ago. After a few other coaching stints, his head coaching career began at Utah Valley, building significant progress for the Wolverines across four seasons.

Having formerly been an assistant under Dave Rose, Pope was brought back to BYU in 2019 as the new head coach and he’s now four seasons into his tenure. Pope led the Cougars to the NCAA Tournament in his second season and has won at least 24 games twice, but last season was disappointing. It was a second straight 5th place finish in the WCC, with the Cougars finishing below .500 in conference play, finishing just 17-14 on the year.

BYU was one of the best programs in the WCC, but they didn’t really show it the last couple of seasons. Pope has his work cut out for him to get these Cougars into shape for the Big 12, which will be a significant challenge these next few seasons. Pope’s work hasn’t been bad by any means, and he’s averaging more than 20 wins a season as a head coach; it’s just that last year’s struggles really bring him down, especially with tougher tests on the horizon this year.