Rick Pitino was very open about his love for Mark Pope and his time at Kentucky

Former legendary Kentucky coach Rick Pitino coached now-Kentucky head coach Mark Pope to a National Championship in 1996. Since then, the two have had a close bond that Pope has mentioned a number of times since he took the Kentucky job in April of 2024. On Saturday, all of that emotion will come to a head as Kentucky and St. John's will square off in Atlanta at the CBS Sports Classic. It's the old student vs. teacher saying coming to fruition, this time on the basketball court.

But before we get to the matchup, it would be remissed to not share how highly those two think of each other still to this day, 30 years since Kentucky lifted the 1996 championship trophy, with Pitino as head coach and Mark Pope as captain. Pope has talked about Pitino a lot, but no comment is as touching as the one Pope gave at his introductory press conference before he then welcomed him back to Rupp Arena at Big Blue Madness. "Every coach that has coached here has done amazing things, contributed to Big Blue Nation, but Coach Pitino changed me. And I will tell you, like he changed me to my soul, changed my DNA as a human being. He allowed me to be someone who feels they can walk into any room and take on any impossible task."

Now, Pitino gets the opportunity to really open up and share his thoughts on Pope as a player and person before they're on opposite sides of the court in Atlanta on Saturday. Will this game mean extra to Pitino? "It's like coaching against my son. It means a great deal that we get a victory, but I'm still coaching against my son," Pope said on Thursday previewing the matchup. "It means a great deal to get a victory over Kentucky, but I'm still coaching against one of the great (team) captains I've ever had, who I love dearly."

We've heard from Pope about how special Pitino is to him, but why is Pope so special to Pitino? There was something different in him than anybody else on that 1996 National Championship squad, in a good way. His selfless attitude, which is what made him the team captain.

"When you get a team that's one of the greatest in NCAA history, that was a team that had a lot of egos," Pitino said about his beloved 1995-96 Kentucky team. "And there was two people that were totally selfless, and Mark was the captain of a team with a lot of egos. He had to keep everybody in line and keep everybody as one fist and he did a fabulous job of doing that because everybody knew how selfless he was. It was never, ever about Mark Pope."

Pitino loves his former captain so much that he was a huge part in the positivity around the Mark Pope hire when it first happened, even putting out a video on social media. Why was Pitino so passionate about the hire of Pope? "Kentucky is the most different job than any job in all of college basketball. You had people when I first got there telling stories about people in Eastern Kentucky sitting on mountain tops with their radio trying to tune in to listen to Rupp's Runts and all these names they had back then. So, you've gotta represent Kentucky in a way that the people feel very proud. And there's no better guy than a road scholar candidate, captain of one of the best teams to ever play there, a young man who's very cerebral, has done it at all levels, and really wears Kentucky on his chest. It's never going to be about money with Mark, it's never going to be about fame. It's always going to be about representing Kentucky the right way."

The emotions will be riding high in Saturday's matchup, but with Pope and Pitino, there will be no love lost, no matter the result. The two have a special bond that goes back years, and they'll get to write another chapter in their history in State Farm Arena in Atlanta.