Mark Pope loves a good FaceTime call.
It doesn’t matter where he is or what time of the day it is, if he wants to talk to you, he’s going to do it as close to face-to-face as possible. It was a surprise to the Kentucky players initially, who are likely used to texting, but it didn’t take long for them (and the rest of the coaching staff) to start regularly using FaceTime as their main form of communication with each other.
“The first time Coach actually called me, he started FaceTiming me, and I thought it was on accident,” Rising junior center Brandon Garrison recently said on Behind Kentucky Basketball. “So I didn’t answer and I called him regular. And then he FaceTimed me again, and I was like, this is different, because I never had a coach FaceTime me.
“But he likes to see his players face-to-face. Just him doing that, it means a lot.”
There are seemingly endless examples of Pope’s love for using FaceTime since he took over as head coach. It was just a couple of weeks ago that he, Garrison, and Trent Noah were in Glasgow, KY, FaceTimeing with Otega Oweh in front of fans. It’s gotten to the point now where, whenever someone needs Pope, they use FaceTime first.
And sometimes, that leads to funny moments between coach and player. There was no better example of that than when rising sophomore guard Collin Chandler hit Pope with a FaceTime during the latter’s 30-minute live interview with Jon Rothstein of CBS Sports. While Rothstein was asking Pope about the rehab timeline for incoming transfer Jayden Quaintance, Chandler wanted to chat it up with his coach.
Collin Chandler calls Coach Pope during his interview with Jon Rothstein. “Jon, are we live or is this recorded?”
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— Rare Rookies #BBN (@rarerookies) April 30, 2025
Pope’s favorite part of Chandler’s impromptu FaceTime call? He was in the gym putting in offseason work. Pope had actually just gotten done bragging about Chandler to Rothstein and the leap he expects Chandler to make in his second year at Kentucky.
“I expect Collin Chandler to take a massive jump,” Pope said. “He showed huge strides in the last month of the season, and he’s got limitless capacity to be really special.”
After a slow start to his rookie season after spending the previous two years away from basketball, Chandler picked up his play down the stretch. By the end of the season, the 6-foot-5 guard was Kentucky’s first man off the bench and a key piece to the Wildcats’ postseason success. So we can forgive Chandler for stealing some of the spotlight from Pope’s offseason interview.
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