Mark Pope sidesteps Yaxel Lendeborg offer talk, blasts media for contributing to Kentucky’s ‘circus’

ST. LOUIS (AP) — Kentucky coach Mark Pope spent the eve of the Wildcats’ first-round NCAA Tournament game against Santa Clara on Thursday dancing around whether Michigan All-American Yaxel Lendeborg had turned down a lucrative offer to play for him, and blasted the media for contributing to what he called a “circus” surrounding his program.

Lendeborg, who was among the nation’s most coveted players when he decided to leave UAB, told The Associated Press in a story published Monday that what Kentucky offered “started the number with $7 (million) to $9 (million),” and that the implication was “they were pretty much going off on the route like, ‘We’ll pay him anything to get here.’”

Instead, Lendeborg said, he chose to play for Dusty May and the Wolverines for about three times less money.

That made headlines across the country but especially in Kentucky, where the perennially powerful Wildcats tend to dominate front pages come March. And it quickly became the latest distraction for a team that has dealt with plenty of them.

Asked point-blank Thursday whether such an offer was made to Lendeborg, Pope began as if he would answer in a similarly direct manner. But then the coach segued into a dissertation on the state of the media, and about the “circus that comes with Kentucky,” and eventually Pope seemed to imply that what Lendeborg said was inaccurate.

“I know that you guys have to come out of here with a headline. I’m not going to give it to you,” Pope said, “but I would appreciate it if some segment of the media is like, ‘Let’s actually search for like’ — I don’t know. I’m trying not to make a commentary on it.

“This is all part of the distraction that my team is not a part of. We will try and embrace the circus nature of this and count on some responsible media member somewhere to actually kind of dig in and find out or just be responsible reporting.”

Pope was not combative while speaking to a small group of reporters at the Enterprise Center for practice. In fact, Pope responded to multiple questions about Lendeborg with a broad smile and folksy demeanor.

He just didn’t respond with any real answers.

“What makes (Kentucky) different than anyone else,” Pope said after one question, “is if anybody wants clicks they can just say any crazy thing or write any crazy thing or click any crazy thing about Kentucky, and they are going to get clicks and likes, and they are going to get controversy. It’s the way we elevate our stature in the media, unfortunately. This is a broad brush; I’m not talking about every media member or social media member, which is really not a media member at all.”

Pope guessed the percentage of news that is reported accurately about his program was “in the fifth percentile.”

“There’s nobody more surprised about what the head coach at Kentucky has done than the head coach of Kentucky,” Pope said. “I am shocked by it every single day.”

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AP March Madness bracket: https://apnews.com/hub/ncaa-mens-bracket and coverage: https://apnews.com/hub/march-madness