"So happy for you": Legendary coach Rick Pitino celebrates BYU coach Mark Pope’s brilliant win against No. 11 Baylor recalling their 1996 triumph

Iconic college hoops head coach Rick Pitino recently took to X, formerly Twitter, to congratulate BYU tactician Mark Pope on his team's upset of No. 11 Baylor on Tuesday:

The current head coach for St. John's recalled how Pope used to play for him with the 1996 Kentucky Wildcats, who won the national championship and today remains as "one of the greatest college teams ever assembled," in Pitino's own words.

True enough, the 1996 Wildcats was the consensus best team in the nation that season. Going 34-2 for the year and undefeated in 16 SEC matchups, Kentucky tore through the first four rounds of the 1996 March Madness – winning all their games during that stretch by more than 20 points.

That streak ended with a relatively slim 81-74 victory over No. 1 Massachusetts in the Final Four, and their eventual 76-67 national title victory over Syracuse.

Mark Pope, a then-former 1992 Freshman of the Year awardee for the Cats, played with a veritably stacked team in that 1996 run. Among his teammates were Nazr Mohammed, Tony Delk, Ron Mercer and Antoine Walker.

BYU's upset of Baylor at a glance

The BYU Cougars came into their game against Baylor predicted to be able to match the Bears shot-for-shot. True enough, that's exactly what they did. They led the Bears throughout the game via a game-high 16 points from senior forward Jaxson Robinson – who hit the dagger 3 in the final moments to finally put Baylor away.

BYU headed into the half up five, 42-37 after falling behind by as much as nine early, then mostly kept Baylor at bay throughout the second half. One could attribute this to the Cougars' excellent defense of the three-point shot, forcing the Bears to shoot an atrocious 25% from rainbow country all game.

This was a golden defensive performance against the Big 12's best 3-point shooting team thus far, owing to Mark Pope and his staff's timely adjustments. And with the long-range bomb almost completely shut out for them, the Bears had to rely on their scoring inside the arc and in the paint. After they shut that down, BYU was then the one to light things up from downtown, shooting 14-for-36 from 3.

Second-chance points were also critical for the win, with the Cougars pulling down 16 offensive rebounds for 20 second-chance points all in all (via BYUCougars.com). Spencer Johnson was a monster on the boards with five of these offensive rebounds, with nine total for the game.