PROVO — It won’t be an ordinary day.
Mark Pope will face the West Coast Conference media Thursday at the Orleans Hotel in Las Vegas and, man, does he have a tale to tell. And he hasn’t even coached a BYU game on U.S. soil yet.
The first-year coach will have to wear a lot of hats to explain his odyssey so far at BYU.
He’ll have to be a storyteller. He’ll have to be a spin master, lawyer and doctor. He’ll be part scriptwriter and part winded New York Times headline writer. He will be explaining the adventure of being a BYU basketball coach and he’s got a drama to do justice to. It should be interesting when he goes to the podium and says, “We’re excited to start this season.”
On July 24, star guard and embattled athlete Nick Emery announced he was retiring from basketball. Pope had hit Emery up with some big challenges and goals. Emery didn’t like his approach and decided to get on with his life and new marriage, which included becoming a stepfather. Pope may not elaborate. But it would be fun if he did.
Another drama Pope may tell, but cannot identify the characters because of NCAA regulations, is the tragic accident at the end of July when he and his staff took recruits into the mountains to ride ATVs, identified to be RZR side-by-sides. On the trip, ESPN Top 100 four-star recruit Mady Sissoko’s ATV turned over, he put his hand down to brace himself and broke it.
One of Pope’s first priorities when he was hired was to travel across the world to Mali in West Africa to meet the parents of Sissoko, a 6-foot-10 power forward and center.
That was an unbelievable bolt of bad luck for everyone, impacting Sissoko’s basketball season as well as his nationally ranked Wasatch Academy team in Mount Pleasant, Sanpete County. Pope may not bring this one up, but if he did, he would have to be a lawyer to explain who was liable and paid for medical expenses and he’d have to be a physician to describe the injury.
But that was just the beginning for Pope in his new job.
On Aug. 9, the NCAA delivered a bombshell.
After working to convince star forward Yoeli Childs to return for his senior year in April, Pope learned the NCAA suspended him for nine games for not properly filling out paperwork when he signed with an agent last spring and dabbled in putting his name in for the draft. An appeal of the decision was denied.
This was a huge setback, frustrating and seemingly unfair for Pope, who had nothing to do with any of it except convincing Childs to return. How he did that would be a great story.
While coaching his Cougars in Italy a few days later, star shooting forward Zac Seljaas broke his foot and returned home to have surgery, significantly setting him back when drills began in late September.
Then the NCAA came calling once again, on Sept. 4. This time it was a rejection of an appeal by the committee on infractions, upholding a decision to vacate two seasons’ worth of wins as a result of the Emery case for accepting improper benefits. Again, this had nothing to do with Pope but did embarrass the school and program and infuriated fans that follow his team.
A week later on Sept. 10, as expected, Sissoko committed to Michigan State. This was a few days after Emery publicly dissed Pope on Twitter and later apologized.
About this time star shooting guard and team leader TJ Haws, nursing an injured knee, underwent arthroscopic surgery, knocking him out of practice time for more than a week just as things in Pope’s fall camp kicked off the new season.
You’d think this was enough?
Wrong.
Earlier this week as the difficult month came to a close, BYU confirmed that jumping jack forward 6-9 Gavin Baxter, one of the most athletic players on the team, had torn his labrum and busted up his shoulder while battling for a rebound. He is expected to be out for the season.
Welcome to the new job, coach Pope.
Back on April 10, the day he was announced as the Cougars’ new coach, Pope told reporters and fans, “It’s like nowhere else, and that’s a special challenge for us.”
No kidding.
But there was good news on Wednesday, the day before WCC men’s basketball media day.
A team at Insight Pest Solutions did a survey of over 13,000 sports fans asking which team bugs them the most over various sports and BYU was ranked eighth. Actually, it could be seen as a compliment because the top 10 teams on the list include the top powerhouse programs in the nation.
No. 1 is Duke (35.3%), followed by No. 2 Kentucky (9%), No. 3 North Carolina (6.6%), No 4 Michigan (5.1%), No. 5 Michigan State (3.3%), No. 6 Kansas (2.9%), No. 7 Ohio State (2.8%), No. 8 BYU (1.9%) followed by Arizona (1.9%) and Indiana (1.5%).
Mark, you are in good company.
Good luck talking to the media about the program.