LEXINGTON, Ky. — If you feel like you just lived through one of the best Kentucky basketball weeks in eons, it is because you did.

Last Tuesday night, the UK men turned in a gritty, late-game rally that carried the Wildcats to a 77-72 upset of then-No. 6 Duke in the State Farm Champions Classic in Atlanta.

In his third game as Kentucky’s head coach, Mark Pope ended the Wildcats’ four-game losing skid in the Champions Classic and gave UK — and its backers — only the third victory over those dastardly Dookies in the last 12 meetings between the teams.

For good measure, Pope, whose recruiting prowess at the level Kentucky expects to work was entirely unproven when he was hired by UK, finished out last week by signing the players ranked No. 16 (Jasper Johnson), No. 28 (Malachi Moreno) and No. 30 (Acaden Lewis) in the class of 2025 by the 247 Sports Composite Rankings.

Alas, that was only half of last week’s Wildcats basketball bounty.

Last Saturday night, the UK women turned in a gritty, late-game rally that carried the Wildcats to a 71-61 overtime upset of then-No. 18 Louisville before a sold-out crowd at Memorial Coliseum.

In his fourth game as Kentucky’s head coach, Kenny Brooks ended the Wildcats’ seven-game losing skid versus their intrastate rivals and gave UK — and its backers — its first victory against a team ranked in the AP Top 25 in more than two seasons.

For good measure, Brooks, who gave up a good situation at Virginia Tech, in part, because he believed he could leverage the brand “Kentucky basketball” into greater access to elite recruits, finished out last week by getting commitments from players that ESPN HoopGurlz ranks No. 15 in the class of 2025 (Kaelyn Carroll) and No. 18 in the class of 2026 (Maddyn Greenway).

After a week filled with such reward, it’s intriguing to ponder which of Kentucky’s first-year head basketball coaches is off to the best start.

As a disclaimer, the returns on the coaching of both Pope and Brooks are exceedingly early. By the time many of you read this, the Kentucky women will have played Purdue Fort Wayne (Monday night at Memorial Coliseum) and the UK men will soon face Lipscomb (Tuesday night at Rupp Arena).

Obviously, if the Kentucky women follow up their victory over U of L by losing to the Mastodons or if the UK men fail to back up their win over Duke and fall to the Bisons, then some of the coaching goodwill that has been generated will be lost.

In evaluating the jobs done so far by Pope and Brooks, it is interesting to note where they have faced the same challenges and where their ultimate tasks differ.

When he came to Kentucky, Brooks inherited two returning scholarship players from the previous coaching regime. That’s two more than Pope got after following John Calipari.

Both Pope and Brooks made deft use of the transfer portal to build rosters that have allowed Kentucky to successfully fire from the starting gates with what are, essentially, brand-new teams.

“These guys, nobody knew each other. Nobody had ever been with each other,” Pope said after the victory over Duke of his players. “They’ve been very intentional about getting to know each other. Three or four weeks into the summer, I had guys doing incredibly gracious, generous acts of kindness for their teammates.”

In Brooks’ case, injuries to transfer wings Jordan Obi (Pennsylvania) and Dominika Paurová (Oregon State) have left the new Kentucky coach with a playing rotation filled with smallish guards and towering front court players.

“We put together what I thought was a special roster,” Brooks said after the win over Louisville. “It’s unfortunate we have two kids who are out right now. … Those were two kids I thought were going to be starters.”

Paurová is out for the season, while Obi’s chance of returning this year is still to be determined.

While much about the first seasons of Pope and Brooks have so far tracked, their ultimate assignments, if you will, are different.

Inheriting the all-time winningest program in men’s college basketball history, Pope’s task is to reinvigorate an historically regal operation that had gone stale over the final four seasons of his predecessor’s reign.

Conversely, Brooks is operating from the belief that the name “Kentucky” should aid in his elevating the historically good, not great, UK women’s program to the same heights that Wildcats men’s hoops has traditionally reached.

As coaching tasks, those are quite different.

In analyzing whether it is Brooks or Pope who is off to the best start at Kentucky, the answer to that question is simple:

It’s a tie.

In admittedly small sample sizes, both coaches have done about as well — probably even better — than anyone could have reasonably expected when they were hired.

That’s why, if you are one whose allegiance is pledged to the University of Kentucky and its basketball teams, that tie is the best possible outcome.

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