Mark Pope

Mark Edward Pope (born September 11, 1972) is an American basketball coach and is the head coach for Utah Valley University. A former college and professional player, he played for the national championship Kentucky Wildcats and later the Indiana Pacers, the Milwaukee Bucks and the Denver Nuggets of the NBA.

Pope was a high school star at Newport High School in Bellevue, WA and played two years at the University of Washington. He earned Pac-10 Freshman of the Year honors in 1992 after setting a UW freshman single-season record with 8.1 rebounds per game. He transferred to the University of Kentucky and was a member of Kentucky's 1996 NCAA Men's Basketball Champion team. Pope was a second round pick of the Pacers in the 1996 NBA Draft. The last year of his career was the 2004-05 season as he was cut in training camp with the Nuggets the following season.

Pope enrolled in medical school in 2006 at Columbia University College of Physicians and Surgeons in New York City. In 2009, he left medical school and joined the staff of Mark Fox at the University of Georgia. Fox was an assistant coach when both were at the University of Washington. The following season (2010–11), Pope moved to Wake Forest University to serve as an assistant under Jeff Bzdelik.

In May 2011, it was announced that Pope had been hired as an assistant to Dave Rose at Brigham Young University. Pope replaced Dave Rice, who left BYU to assume the head coach position at UNLV.

In March 2015, it was announced that Pope had been hired as the new head basketball coach at Utah Valley University, replacing the retiring Dick Hunsaker.

Pope and his wife Lee Anne, a former assistant to talk show host David Letterman, have four daughters. Lee Anne is the daughter of the late Lynn Archibald, who was the head coach at Utah and was an assistant at BYU in the 1990s. He is a member of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints.