John Clay: Mark Pope's summer construction job is about more than just basketball

Only one of those players is familiar with the head coach. That would be Jaxson Robinson, the Big 12 Sixth Man of the Year who followed Pope from Provo and BYU to Lexington and UK.

“I bumble around and Jaxson will say, ‘All right guys, this is what he really means,’” Pope said. “He’ll double down on the ideas of like, ‘Hey guys, this is really important. You’re going to hear this, what we’ve been talking about, you’re going to hear every single day for the rest of the season. And then there’s a lot of things where Jax is like, ‘Don’t listen to him. He doesn’t know what he’s talking about.’”

Big Blue Nation is listening. You can bet on that. With construction workers busy renovating inside the adjacent Memorial Coliseum, every media seat and television camera space inside the lobby of the Craft Center was filled for Pope’s question and answer session.

My question: What has been the hardest part of the job so far? Is it just finding the time to do everything that needs to be done?

“Wow, I don’t know how to answer that question,” said the coach. “Everything is challenging in the way you would expect it to be. But it’s like all the challenges kind of fade away into the sheer awesomeness of getting to do this, of being here with you guys and being able to be with the guys on the court and this staff.

“This staff, we can’t get through a staff meeting, we can’t even finish a staff meeting. It always breaks out into someone running out of the room because they’re laughing so hard. It’s a ton of time, but it’s the greatest challenge that we’ll ever face in our professional careers and it’s pretty exciting.”

Basketball aside, that’s what it’s all about.

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