Jeff Sheppard ‘pumped up’ for the Mark Pope era to begin. ‘This is going to be awesome.’

Jeff Sheppard was standing in — of all places — Rupp Arena on Thursday night, when the news started to trickle out.

Mark Pope was in line to be the next men’s basketball coach at Kentucky.

By the next morning, the giddiness of the moment still hadn’t worn off.

“I’m pumped up. I’m so excited. This is going to be awesome,” Sheppard said early Friday morning, the emotion in his voice suggesting an ear-to-ear smile on the other end of the line.

“Excited” was clearly an understatement, but it was the word Sheppard used several times to describe the joy he felt over the course of the evening as it became clear that Pope — his former UK teammate, roommate and longtime friend — was about to take over the basketball program that brought them together more than three decades ago.

Pope was officially announced Friday as the new head coach of the Wildcats, and his old friend couldn’t be happier.

Sheppard — a two-time national champion at UK and the Most Outstanding Player of the 1998 Final Four — was in Rupp on Thursday as part of “The Reed Sheppard Experience,” a camp event headlined by his son, the reigning national freshman of the year and second-generation Kentucky basketball superstar.

While consumed by the event, Sheppard was obviously distracted by the news happening outside the building where he and Pope had led the Wildcats to so many great moments.

“As the night went on and it looked like it was going to happen, I just got more and more excited about it,” he said.

Once the camp was finished — and before Pope’s hiring was official — Sheppard had more time to take in what was about to happen to the program that has meant so much to his family.

“Man, I’m excited,” he said in an interview with the Herald-Leader on Friday morning. “Because I know Mark personally. We were roommates. I know what kind of character of a man he is. I know the energy that he brings to life, every single day. I know the love that he has for Kentucky basketball, for the program, for the people in Kentucky. He realizes how impactful his years at Kentucky have been on the rest of his life. And for him to have the opportunity to return and be in a role of leadership like he is — to try to help young men be able to experience what he experienced, but also to help the program be able to experience what the program experienced — is just who he is. It’s what he’s made up of.

“He’s all about family. He’s all about hard work. He’s all about life and fun and energy. And so all of that is what Kentucky fans are going to see through this next season as Mark’s leading our program.”

Mark Pope at Kentucky

Before the night was finished — and before Pope had even made things official with UK — the two former teammates connected on the phone.

“He’s very excited,” Sheppard said of that conversation. “You know, you’re kind of right in the middle of putting everything together. So I think you’ll be able to get all of his energy and all of his emotions here in just a little bit. As soon as he lands in Kentucky, everybody’s going to get the energy and the emotion that he’s going to bring to the table. And it’s going to be very exciting. And, I think, contagious. I think a lot of people are going to rally around him. And I’m one of those that is absolutely ready to rally around him and support him. And it’s going to be fun.”

Pope came to Kentucky from Washington in 1993 as a transfer, sat out the 1993-94 campaign and then played the following two seasons with the Wildcats, emerging as a key member and veteran leader of the beloved 1996 national championship squad, one of the greatest teams in the program’s storied history.

Sheppard was a freshman on the 1993-94 team, showing up at UK as an 18-year-old high school star eager to take on the challenge of playing for coach Rick Pitino on one of college basketball’s biggest stages.

The two first met — Sheppard recalled Friday morning — outside the original Wildcat Lodge that used to sit next to Memorial Coliseum, before the Joe Craft Center existed and the new lodge for UK men’s basketball players was built.

“I just remember him being an authentic young man that just loved life,” Sheppard said, chuckling at the memory of the smiling, 6-foot-10 Pope on campus in those days. “I just picture him with his bicycle, his hat on backward and his flip flops. And here I come from Georgia — from two different corners of the United States — to meet at Kentucky and to be roommates.”

It was the beginning of a long-lasting friendship, and Sheppard — two years younger than Pope — remembered he and his teammates relying on the older player’s experience to guide them through the grueling practices of the Pitino era, still marveling at the example that Pope set for his peers both on and off the court.

“What a teammate. What a student,” Sheppard said. “Just a hard worker. And a committed teammate — for one goal, and it is to win basketball games and win championships. And that’s his agenda in life. That’s the way that it was from day one, and he was able to stay laser-focused on that and sacrifice for the team, buy in for the team, do whatever was necessary.

“Coach Pitino asked him to gain weight. Coach Pitino asked him to lose weight. He was all-in, no matter what, for his coach. That’s how he lives, and I think that’s what we’re going to see out of him as a coach.”

Sheppard and Pope shared the court together for two seasons. Kentucky went 28-5 in the 1994-95 campaign, earning a 1 seed in the NCAA Tournament before losing to North Carolina in the Elite Eight.

The following season was arguably the best in UK basketball history. That 1995-96 squad — with Pope as a captain, alongside fellow seniors Tony Delk and Walter McCarty — went 34-2, losing the second game of the regular season to Calipari’s UMass Minutemen and the SEC Tournament title game to Mississippi State, with 27 consecutive wins in between.

Kentucky ultimately won the NCAA title, the program’s first in 18 years. Pope graduated in 1996, and the Cats went on to play in the national title game the following year before winning another NCAA championship in 1998, when Sheppard was a senior and the team’s leading scorer.

Sheppard said Pope’s unique experience as a UK player should be an advantage when he takes over the program. Since Adolph Rupp arrived in 1930 and built Kentucky basketball into the national power that it is today, the only UK coach who actually played for the Wildcats has been Joe B. Hall, who appeared in just three games before transferring to Sewanee midway through his sophomore season.

Pope lived in the UK basketball fishbowl during one of the program’s greatest stretches.

“I think he has a distinct advantage in that,” Sheppard said. “He gets to speak to players from a player’s perspective. He’s not only a coach. He was also a player here. There are few people that can look at a Kentucky recruit or a Kentucky athlete and say, ‘I know what you’re going through. I know what you’re feeling.’ And Mark is one of those. And he’s gone through seasons that ended in great agony. You know, we lost a very, very difficult game to North Carolina in the regional final (in 1995). But that also propelled us — as individuals and as a group — to make a run in ’96, ’97 and ’98.

“Of course, he was a senior in ’96, but he was one of the key members — along with Walter McCarty and Tony Delk — that kind of laid the foundation of work, of positive energy, of expectation, of sacrifice that the ’97 and ’98 teams — we kind of ran off that foundation that those guys laid. So, him having that perspective definitely gives an advantage.”

What’s next for Reed Sheppard?

Of course, Jeff Sheppard — famous as he’s been around these parts for the past three decades — is, at this moment, best known as Reed Sheppard’s dad, a fact that he often acknowledges with self-deprecating humor.

Sheppard and his wife, Stacey Reed Sheppard — a UK women’s basketball star in the 1990s — were fixtures in Rupp Arena and on television broadcasts of the Wildcats’ games this past season as their son shot to Kentucky basketball stardom.

The younger Sheppard’s immediate future is a major focus of this UK offseason for a rabid fan base hoping beyond hope that he turns down the 2024 NBA draft — where he’s projected as a lottery pick — to come back to Kentucky and play a second season.

Fans of all ages showed up in droves Thursday night in Rupp Arena to take part in “The Reed Sheppard Experience” — the basketball camp featuring the 19-year-old star and his family.

Sheppard has not made any public announcement on his future plans. He has until April 27 to officially enter the NBA draft. If he does that — and wants to retain the possibility of a return to college — he would have until May 29 to make a final stay-or-go decision.

Does the arrival of Pope — his father’s longtime friend — change the thought process?

“It’s a good question,” said Jeff Sheppard. “You know, Mark has been a friend for a long time. I don’t know. Last night was a late night, and I haven’t really gotten to talk to Reed much about that. He’s trying to go through a process of gathering information to really see truly where he is. There’s obviously all kinds of talk. But with a decision like this, you can’t just listen to a little bit of talk. You really have to get concrete information. And so, we feel like we’re going through the process at the right speed.

“Will this have an impact? Or what is the timing? That’s still an unknown. It’s something that we will continue to work through. We’ll probably — as the Sheppards usually do — work through it as a family. With the door closed. And we’ll do our best to communicate when it’s the right time.”

In the meantime, Sheppard hopes the UK fan base fully embraces his former teammate as he begins the difficult transition from the Calipari era to a new chapter of Kentucky basketball.

The decision by UK athletics director Mitch Barnhart to pivot so quickly to Pope — after Baylor’s Scott Drew and UConn’s Dan Hurley publicly declared they were staying put, and amid speculation that Chicago Bulls head coach Billy Donovan had genuine interest in the job — was met with a backlash among a segment of vocal fans, who voiced that displeasure on social media.

Sheppard said he hadn’t looked at the negative reactions. He’s excited for the future. And he predicts that — once Kentucky fans get to know Pope again — they will be, too.

“I know what I will see from the fans, because I know the fans. The fans are all in,” he said. “There may be some fans that have some opinions and comments. They can have those. That’s fine. But I know the heartbeat of the Kentucky fan. And it is ‘all in.’ I experienced it last night. Kentucky fans are always all in. And they reserve the right to make a comment or two if they want to. But, at the end of the day, they’ll be there. Rupp Arena will be full. The fans will be rallying around Mark and his team. And, as he puts this together, it will be exciting. It will be special.

“He’s going to bring a fast style of play that the fans are going to enjoy. Players are going to enjoy playing in that system. And I think he’s going to position the program to have an excellent run — year after year after year. And so we just have to do our part. And support. … I do know that if we are all in and we stand with Mark — that some special things can happen for us.”

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