Mark Pope’s first Kentucky Basketball staff is rounding into form.
Cody Fueger has been confirmed as the first member of Pope’s staff, and we have two more names who are likely to join them in Lexington.
Per The Athletic’s Kyle Tucker, Kentucky is set to add Jason Hart to one of the primary assistant coaching roles, while Mark Fox is set to take a Bruiser Flint-type non-recruiting role on the support staff.
CBS Sports’ Matt Norlander confirmed the Hart news.
Fox has a deep connection to Pope, as the two worked together with the Georgia Bulldogs for one season in 2009-10 when the former was the head coach and hired the latter as an assistant coach. That was actually Pope’s first break as a college coach.
But the connection doesn’t stop there. Fox was actually an assistant coach for the Washington Huskies from 1991-93 when Pope joined the program and earned Pac-10 Freshman of the Year honors in 1992. But after then-head coach Lynn Nance was fired following the 1992-93 season, Fox was also let go, leading Pope to transfer to Kentucky, and the rest is history.
Since then, Fox has had head-coaching stints at Nevada (2004-09), Georgia (2009-18), and California (2019-23), going 324–263 overall.
This past season, Fox was the director of student-athlete relations and NIL partnerships at Georgetown.
As for Hart, this is the first time he’s been mentioned as a candidate for Kentucky’s staff. The former Syracuse Orange guard (1996–2000) spent 10 years playing in the NBA, then became the head coach of Taft High School in California (2011-12).
Hart became an assistant coach at Pepperdine for the following season (2012-13), then became an assistant for USC (2013-21) before becoming the head coach for the NBA G League Ignite since then.
As you may know, the G-League Ignite ‘was’ a developmental team for players coming out of high school who played against other teams in the NBA G-League but has since folded.
That would be two of the three primary assistant spots being locked up.
Thoughts on the incoming hires?