Kentucky targeting someone with deep Mark Pope connections for 'front office role'

Kentucky basketball is expected to hire Keegan Brown for an important front office role.

Feb 17, 2026; Lexington, Kentucky, USA; Kentucky Wildcats head coach Mark Pope calls out to his players during the first half against the Georgia Bulldogs at Rupp Arena at Central Bank Center. Mandatory Credit: Jordan Prather-Imagn Images | Jordan Prather-Imagn Images

The talk about Kentucky needing a GM to help its recruiting efforts has gotten very loud over the last few months. Mark Pope said a few weeks ago that the talk of hiring a GM has been an 'ongoing conversation,' and it looks like he and his staff have zeroed in on one of its front office guys, someone to fill that new 'Player Development' job opening.

According to On3's Joe Tipton, Kentucky is set to hire Keegan Brown in a 'front office role' in Lexington. Brown is someone who has deep connections to Mark Pope, as he worked alongside him in his time at BYU before taking the head coaching job at Kentucky. This 'front office' role, as Tipton put it, fits the description of the job opening UK posted last weekend. Brown was previously on Pope's BYU staff for five years before then heading to the G League as a Director of Player Personnel. In his time with Pope, Brown handled areas such as NIL, transfer portal, video and analytics. He would clearly be an important part of this staff.

Last weekend, UK posted a job opening for a 'player development' position, in which Pope described as a back-office one. Here is what he had to say about what that role will look like: "Somebody that can model for us, 24/7, that can do salary cap models, that could do win-share models, that could do comparison research in terms of us trying to have some just get as deep into the details of managing this spring's roster construction as we can. It's really important to have somebody that literally, 24 hours a day, seven days a week, is going to be just war gaming and modeling over and over and over again."

Brown certainly seems to fit that description. Pope then said that this is 'not the final piece that we will add," alluding that another important addition to the staff is coming soon, in likely what will be the GM position. "With the changing dynamics, this is not the final piece that we will add," Pope said on the 'Player Development' position. "This is a piece that’s going to make a big difference for us in our information gathering and our analysis of data. It’s going to be massively important for us to make the best educated guesses that we can."

It looks like Kentucky has its first big get in this new day and age in college basketball, where hiring guys like Brown is massively important. Now we wait for an official announcement that is expected soon.