by Will Muiter
The Paducah Sun
August 21, 2026
Used with permission.
After a successful playing career and a year helping out the men’s basketball squad at Southern Miss, 2021 Paducah Tilghman High School alum Eli Brown has joined Mark Pope’s staff as he takes on the role as a graduate assistant for Kentucky men’s basketball squad.
“It’s been great,” Brown said about being with the team. “Obviously it’s Kentucky, so not only am I back home where my parents went, but it is the highest level of college basketball. So even if I wasn’t from Kentucky and I wasn’t a former fan, this is still great for me personally in my career to get the experience and learn from Coach Pope and the rest of the staff, and just be around that high-level group of players every day. It’s been great so far. It happened pretty fast and had to get straight to work, so I didn’t really have time to be mesmerized; I just had to get straight to it.”
Brown spent last season as a volunteer assistant coach at Southern Miss, helping the Golden Eagles finish with a 19-16 record and make it all the way to the Sun Belt tournament semifinals. He had the option to return to Southern Miss for the upcoming season, but chose to use a new connection on UK’s staff to help him land the job.
“I was at Southern Mississippi last year, and Kentucky hired Mo Williams in the spring. He was at Jackson State down in Mississippi, so we knew a couple of the same people, so I got in touch with him,” Brown said. “I had the option to go back to Southern Miss, and I was interested in that and exploring everything, so I got in touch with Mo, talked to him a little bit, and he passed it along to Coach Pope and Coach Robinson. I had a couple phone calls with assistants, then my own with Pope, and I ended up landing the spot.”
As far as his role, a grad assistant helps with many vital functions that keep a successful basketball program running. They are heavily involved with day-to-day operations and practice, as well as helping the players get work in whenever the opportunity presents itself.
“So as a graduate assistant, we help with a bunch of stuff behind the scenes,” Brown said. “The individual workouts outside of practice. Whenever the guys want to get in the gym, I’m there for that. In practice, it’s a lot of utility stuff. It might be scout team, might be rebounding, might be passing, might be dummy defense, really whatever’s needed. Up in the office, it’s a ton of film. Whatever the coaches need in film or any analytical standpoint, we’re there to present that information for them to use. It’s a lot of behind-the-scenes stuff that’s not very pretty, but it has to be done for things on the court to go well.”
Eli Brown is hoping to use last year and this upcoming season as stepping stones in his coaching career. He has aspirations of remaining at the collegiate level, but understands the trickiness of the college landscape and is happy to go wherever his coaching journey takes him.
“I’d like to stay at the college level for as long as I can,” Brown said about his coaching career. “It’s kind of a funky business with some of the relocating and stuff you have to do. It’s a tough business the way schools just let coaches go, and even the same thing with the players. I would like to stay in the college industry as long as I can, and then if I need to get out of it, I’d be open to high school or whatever presents itself.”
For Brown, this opportunity represents a step in his coaching journey that began not long after his playing career. Now back in Kentucky, Eli plans on making the most of this opportunity with a collegiate program at the highest level, where he will soak up as much as he can to hopefully lead to another coaching stop amongst the best college basketball has to offer.