No. 10 Santa Clara vs. No. 7 Kentucky Game Preview (0:58)
Check out some stats on No. 10 Santa Clara’s Round of 64 matchup with No. 7 Kentucky in the NCAA men’s tournament. (0:58)
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Ben BabyMar 19, 2026, 02:23 PM ET
- Ben Baby covers the Cincinnati Bengals for ESPN. He joined the company in July 2019. Prior to ESPN, he worked for various newspapers in Texas, most recently at The Dallas Morning News where he covered college sports. He provides daily coverage of the Bengals for ESPN.com, while making appearances on SportsCenter, ESPN’s NFL shows and ESPN Radio programs. A native of Grapevine, Texas, he graduated from the University of North Texas with a bachelor’s degree in journalism. He is an adjunct journalism professor at Southern Methodist University and a member of the Asian American Journalists Association (AAJA).
ST. LOUIS — Kentucky men’s basketball coach Mark Pope had a lot of things to say about Michigan star Yaxel Lendeborg‘s comments that he received a multimillion-dollar offer to play for the Wildcats.
One thing Pope didn’t explicitly say: Lendeborg was wrong.
Pope heavily suggested that Lendeborg’s claim to The Associated Press that Kentucky offered him $7 million to $9 million to transfer from UAB in 2025 was inaccurate. However, Pope did not explicitly deny or confirm Lendeborg’s reported offer.
“I am trying not to make a commentary on it,” Pope said Thursday ahead of 7-seed Kentucky’s first-round game against 10-seed Santa Clara in the NCAA tournament. “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.”
Lendeborg’s comments to the AP were published Monday. Pope said that a couple of days ago, outgoing Kentucky athletic director Mitch Barnhart walked into his office and had a conversation about things that were being reported before Pope on Thursday decried the accuracy standards of modern media, calling this “an interesting time in the world.”
Lendeborg told the AP that Kentucky had “started the number with $7 [million] to $9 [million].”
“They were pretty much going off on the route like we’ll pay him anything to get here,” he said, noting that the Wildcats’ offer was about three times higher than what he took from the Wolverines.
Lendeborg helped the Wolverines (31-3) win the Big Ten regular-season title and receive a 1-seed in the NCAA tournament. Kentucky (21-13) sputtered toward the end of the regular season, going 2-5 in its last seven SEC games and reaching the conference tournament quarterfinals before losing to Florida.
In his second season at Kentucky, Pope is seeking to lead the Wildcats to back-to-back Sweet 16 appearances for the first time since 2018-19.
Earlier this season, ESPN’s Dick Vitale mentioned on a broadcast that Kentucky’s roster cost roughly $22 million to assemble. The Wildcats, like some of the other top brands in the sport, have sought to maximize current NIL regulations to produce a winning program.
Whereas Pope talked around the alleged Lendeborg offer, he was direct in speaking about how NIL has impacted the expectations of leading one of college basketball’s most storied programs.
“In terms of the NIL situation, it might add some pressure to it,” Pope said. “I think it definitely adds distraction.”
But even if Pope desperately wanted to avoid making headlines ahead of Friday’s game against Santa Clara, he embraced the conversation about what Kentucky can accomplish.
“The pressure is ever present, and we want it,” Pope said. “That’s why we come to Kentucky — for it to matter. We love that part.”
