New Kentucky head coach Mark Pope has officially added his former boss to his debut Wildcat coaching staff.
Mark Fox, who spent last season as Georgetown’s Director of Student-Athlete Relations and NIL Partnerships, is set to join the Wildcats staff has been hired as an associate coach on Pope’s staff. He will join Cody Fueger, Jason Hart, and Alvin Brooks III on Pope’s bench.
“I can’t believe that I get to work with Mark Fox,” Pope said via press release. “Our relationship began at the University of Washington when I was a freshman and ever since then he has been an incredible mentor to me over the years. He even hired me for my first job.
“He is one of the most intelligent and most detailed-oriented coaches in all of college basketball. Mark has coached NBA draft picks. He’s coached teams in the NCAA Tournament. He’s recruited the best players in the country, and he’s dealt with every changing dynamic in college basketball over the last 25 years. Coach Fox is going to be a lynchpin in all that we do at the University of Kentucky. I’m glad to welcome Cindy and their family to Big Blue Nation.”
“This opportunity is extra special because, not only do I get to work at one of the most traditional basketball powers in the country, but I also get to work with a former player and a former staff member who is like family to me,” Fox added.
The 55-year-old Fox’s first coaching job came at Washington as an assistant under Lynn Nance from 1991-93. There, he coached Pope, who played his first two college seasons for the Huskies before transferring to Kentucky.
Fox then returned to his home state of Kansas to serve as an assistant coach under Tom Asbury at Kansas State from 1994-2000 and from 2000-04 worked under Trent Johnson as an assistant at Nevada.
After Johnson was hired away by Stanford before the 2004-05 season, Fox was promoted to head coach of the Wolf Pack. In five seasons as Nevada’s head coach, Fox led the program to three NCAA Tournament appearances, going to the Round of 32 twice. He also reached the CBI twice, posting an overall record of 123-43 in Reno. He won four Western Athletic Conference regular season titles, the 2006 WAC Tournament, and was named WAC coach of the year three times.
Ahead of the 2009-10 season, Fox was named the head coach at Georgia. His debut staff featured Pope, who had just left medical school to pursue a career in coaching.
Fox would stay in Athens for nine seasons from 2009-18 and posted a 163-133 overall record and 77-79 mark in SEC play.
He led the Bulldogs to the NCAA Tournament in both 2011 and 2015 and to the NIT in 2014, 2016 and 2017.
After taking one year off, Fox was named the head coach at California ahead of the 2019-20 season.
He went on to lead the Golden Bears for four seasons in which he struggled mightily as the program went just 38-87 in his tenure as head coach, never posted a winning season and went a woeful 3-29 during the 2022-23 campaign. He was fired following the three-win season and spent last year working for Ed Cooley at Georgetown.
verall, Fox holds a 324-263 record as a head coach.
As a head coach, Fox has helped develop nine NBA Draft picks.
At Nevada, he helped send Ramon Sessions, Nick Fazekas, JaVale McGee, Armon Johnson, and Luke Babbitt to the NBA, and at Georgia, he helped turn Travis Leslie, Trey Thompkins, Kentavious Caldwell-Pope, and Nic Claxton into draft picks.
Pope has just one spot left to fill on his debut coaching staff at Kentucky.
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