[-STAT-]

Considering what he had to do in a short time, basically revitalized the program with the opening press conference in front of 23,000, that moment would've been overwhelming for anyone else, but for someone like Pope who completely understands the expectations and this fanbase, that wasn't a surprise to him, and all of the praise/criticism wasn't a surprise to him either, that's the thing he knows what comes with this job, he is by far the most popular man in this state.

Combine all that with the great staff he put together, a mixture of young up & coming coaches and a veteran guy like Mark Fox, that was the key in putting together a staff around him, a coach is only as good as the staff he has, and he has a great one. Next was hitting the portal, and he truly did a great job of getting proven guys who were deemed outcasts so to speak by former teams, one player who followed him for BYU, and guys who no one had ever heard of come together and build a bond & brotherhood in just a few months' time, and that is exactly what they did.

Moving onto the season, we really didn't know what to expect with this team, just knew or hoped it would be an exciting style of play. We got that just the third game as we defeated Duke (which I happened to be at and it was awesome) and things went off from there. Knew it wasn't going to be a 40-0 type season, but all in all, can't complain of the results of this season, especially being in the SEC which was an absolute grind session every single game. Won some big-time games, beat 2 of the final 4 participants, even through all the injuries, Pope and the rest of the team navigated through it all the best they could. I said toward the end of the regular season, if we could just make it to either Friday/Saturday in the SEC Tournament, and then to the 2nd weekend in the NCAA Tournament, that would be huge for the program moving forward, making it to the Sweet 16 was great, came up 1 short of the elite 8 which would've just been added incentive to make it that far.

So all-in-all, I'd give his season 1 grade an A- considering everything that had to happen/what actually did happen.