Kentucky men’s basketball head coach Mark Pope joined Jeff Goodman on The Field of 68’s live podcast show on Monday night, discussing UK’s backcourt, Pope’s biggest concerns with the roster, the last available roster spot and more.

The near 40-minute segment debriefed a lot of inside information that you can only get from, well, the coach himself, but one of the main interesting topics was where Pope’s mind is at in terms of UK adding another player from the class of 2022.

The topic of question arises after the NCAA announced that they would be granting a fifth year of eligibility to all class of 2022 athletes last week, which brewed some late off-season chatter in the college basketball community.

“We’re very aggressively looking at every opportunity like we always will, and if there’s something that arises that can really help our team be better, then we’re going to take advantage of it,” Pope said.

Following the answer from Pope, the two discussed the difficulty that comes with adding another player from the view of taking a stance against the NCAA.

“Is that (adding a player granted a fifth year) hard in a way?” Goodman said. “Because I’ve talked to many coaches that are like, ‘we don’t want to do it, we don’t want to do it right now, but our job is to win games. And if this can help us win games, we kind of have to do it, especially if other coaches have already done it.’”

Pope responded by relating the issue to the timing at which the eligibility was granted to the class of 2022 players.

“Right now, the weirdness of the situation we’re involved in, lawsuits in at least six states, federal courts, primary lawsuits, appeals, we’re spending what I have to imagine is going to be millions and millions of dollars fighting something we’ve (the NCAA) already agreed that is the right thing to do,” Pope said. “So it’s not like there’s a moral stance that coaches have to take right now; it’s the timing, it’s the timing of all of this.”

Two of the biggest names to be granted a fifth year have been former Missouri Tiger Mark Mitchell and former Michigan State Spartan Jaxon Kohler. There have been some reports that UK is potentially involved with Mitchell, but as of now, nothing is confirmed.

Since Pope imparted that he and his staff aren’t ruling out the addition of a fifth-year player, news surrounding Mitchell, Kohler, and other college basketball transfers is definitely something to keep an eye on. Cats Coverage will have you ready, so make sure you are checking our page as we will continuously provide updates on who they are targeting.

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