ARLINGTON – UT Arlington's Jeremy Pope has been named to Silver Waves Media's 2024 100 Rising Stars: Men's Basketball Mid-Major Assistants list as one of the most impactful assistant coaches in the nation.
 
Pope completed his first season with UTA in 2023-24, helping lead a Maverick resurgence behind an entirely new coaching staff from a 21-loss campaign in 2022-23 to a 20-win year and appearance in the Western Athletic Conference Tournament Final.
 
The Mavs finished 3rd in the WAC with a 13-7 record after being predicted 8th in the preseason coaches' poll, with the five-spot improvement representing the best of any team in the league. Overall, UTA went 20-14, which represented just its eighth 20-win season in the now 65-year history of the program; six of those eight, however, have come since 2007-08.
 
Pope aided in UTA registering top-5 single-season program records this past year in blocks (2nd, 130), 3-pointers made (3rd, 305), points (5th, 2,614), assists (536, 5th) and rebounds (5th, 1,275). The Mavs also bettered their point-per-game average from 66.4 last season to 76.9 this year, and led the WAC in league games at exactly 78 per contest. Defensively, UTA held opponents to only 42.2%, which was the 8th-best mark in program lore.
 
The Mavs had an eight-game winning streak entering the tournament final, which was tied for the 4th longest in program history. That championship game came down to a battle with top-seeded Grand Canyon, and the Mavs trailed by only four points with 35 seconds remaining. GCU went on to win, and then the #12-seeded Lopes knocked off #5 Saint Mary's in the NCAA Tournament First Round on Friday before dropping a narrow tilt to #4 Alabama in the Round of 32 on Sunday night.
 
Pope played a role in developing a WAC-most seven all-conference award winners from four-different UTA players in 2023-24. Those seven were two more than any other team in the league, and included the Sixth Player of the Year in Phillip Russell and Freshman of the Year.
 
In addition to Pope's accolade, head coach KT Turner last week was named a finalist for two different National Coach of the Year honors: the Joe B. Hall Award and the Ben Jobe Award. The Joe B. Hall Award is presented annually to the nation's best first-year men's basketball head coach in Division I, while the Ben Jobe Award is issued each season to the country's top minority head coach. Those award winners will be announced at the Final Four.
   
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