After a decade and a half with Kentucky, former Wildcats head coach John Calipari is no longer leading the program. Now the head coach at Arkansas, the longtime face of the team brought a few of his former players to a new school in the SEC. In his absence, former BYU head coach Mark Pope is now running the show for Kentucky.

Just like 15 years ago, there’s a ton of excitement around this new era of UK basketball. But Mark Pope is walking into much tougher circumstances than John Calipari did.

I think this Kentucky men’s basketball team is going to be pretty good. (I think this Kentucky women’s basketball team is going to be pretty good, too. But for the sake of this column, let’s stick to the men.