After a brief but rather unorthodox search process, former UVU Men’s Basketball Coach Mark Pope has been hired to be the new Men’s Basketball coach at cross-town rival BYU.

“We look forward to seeing what Coach Pope can do to bring our program back into the limelight,” says BYU Athletic Director Tom Holmoe “after all, he did have a 99.9% percentile March Madness Bracket, so we’re confident in his knowledge of college basketball and how to put together a winning team.”

BYU raised some eyebrows when it announced it would base its selection process purely off of NCAA Men’s Basketball Tournament brackets submitted to its ESPN Tournament Challenge group. The group, entitled “Cougz4Dayz”, hosted nearly 200 entries from prospective coaches. Pope faced stiff competition from entrants CougarFan84 and RussNelson4MVP who both correctly picked three out of four Final Four teams but lost ground to Pope when they picked Auburn to win the title. In a dazzling display of coaching prowess, Coach Pope correctly picked Virginia to win the title over Texas Tech, a feat only matched by 0.1% of entrants.

“I’m proud of my bracket, I think it shows my commitment to the sport and my work ethic to scout out every last detail of potential opponents,” Pope said when asked about his success in his opening press conference as BYU’s coach.

In that same press conference, Pope indicated a strong desire to bring the program back to its rich tradition of occasionally beating Gonzaga, then losing in the first round of the NCAA tournament after receiving an 8-11 seed in the West region of the bracket.