The Champions Classic gives annual intel on four college hoops teams that usually matter — check out CJ Moore’s resulting film breakdown on Duke, Kansas, Kentucky and Michigan State — and that means worthwhile hints on the season at large as well. This year, the Champions Classic has confirmed an enormous shift in college basketball fandom.
Hating Kentucky isn’t cool or fun anymore because Kentucky’s coach is both. Mark Pope is relentlessly likable, which means Kentucky basketball has become likable. Adjust accordingly.
Now, “cool” doesn’t work in every sense of the word, not for a 6-foot-10 guy who gives off the energy of a chemistry teacher towering over his students while delivering gentle words of encouragement. Pope is Mr. Vargas in “Fast Times at Ridgemont High,” but with a dry-erase board and no hair.
Just as Vargas was the one teacher who could get Jeff Spicoli enthused about learning something, Pope got his thrown-together first team to figure out how to beat Duke — arguably the most talented outfit in the land — 77-72 on Tuesday in Atlanta. Pope is a former Rhodes scholarship candidate and Columbia medical student who can obviously teach as well as learn.
That might not sound cool, and in fact, his wife, Lee Anne, addressed that very word in
