Mark Pope appeared on the Field of 68 podcast on Tuesday and he had some explaining to do about a recent traffic situation.

On Tuesday morning, reports started breaking that Pope’s car had run out of gas in downtown Lexington, forcing traffic down on a busy road down to just 1 lane for a short period of time.

However, as it turns out, it wasn’t Pope who ran out of gas — it was his wife. As he tells it, she called him on Tuesday morning to help solve the situation and he recruited a few graduate assistants to the cause as well.

“We’re starting a Zoom compliance meeting at 9 a.m. and I get a phone call at 9:01 and it’s Lee Anne and she’s just run out of gas on the busiest street in Lexington,” Pope said. “So I get the GAs, we jump in the car. The police are there, it’s this huge thing. People are driving by and honking horns, ‘Let’s go Cats!'”

Here’s video of Pope’s story:

Kentucky is just a couple of weeks away from officially tipping off the Mark Pope era at Rupp Arena. UK will open the 2024-25 season with USC Upstate on Nov. 4.

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