I have had the same concern, that he hasn't had great success before. He'll have better resources here, he'll have more talented rosters here - but it's yet to be seen if he can be a FF/championship level coach. I AM confident his teams will at least be
good. He was
good, not great
, 3 out of 5 years at BYU (two 6 seeds, 2020 would have been a 5 or a 6) and, again, he's just going to have more talented rosters here. Can he turn those better rosters into title contenders? We can hope, but not a given. He's gonna work his tail off chasing it, he's going to play efficient basketball, so he definitely has a shot at it. But still has to do it.
Looking at BYU before/during his tenure, he definitely did NOT regress compared to his predecessor, David Rose. Pope's first 2 years had a better W/L record than Rose had in the previous 6 (I went back 6 because 2014/15 were two of Rose's better years in his later time there) and last year had a step up in SOS with a still good W/L record. Looking at computer rating of the teams over that span, Pope's teams were on the whole better than Rose's: