News of Kentucky’s decision to hire Mark Pope as its next head coach sent shockwaves across Lexington and the college basketball world as a whole. The expectation was Mitch Barnhart and the Wildcats would go big-game hunting and perhaps wait for Billy Donovan’s season to end in the NBA, which added to the surprise. According to CBS Sports’ Matt Norlander, though, Barnhart didn’t hire Pope out of the blue. The BYU head coach became a candidate in the last few days and it was not an “impromptu decision.” Pope and Kentucky previously scheduled a meeting for Thursday in case some of the higher-pro…