Single Post

Kentucky was stuck. So was John Calipari. The marriage between the 65-year-old Hall of Fame coach and the blue-blooded program was beyond stale. It was toxic. It was awkward. When athletic director Mitch Barnhart and Calipari sat for a local television interview last month to assure fans that they were on the same page, that both of them were committed to getting the Wildcats back on top, it came off more like a hostage video.

Calipari, with his massive buyout, had Barnhart and Kentucky by the basketballs.

And then, a gift out of left field: Arkansas and its billionaire boosters swooped in to steal the coach nobody else was trying to steal and pay the man what nobody else could pay. Everybody wins. OK, maybe not the Razorbacks — that remains to be seen — but certainly Calipari and Kentucky. He desperately needed a fresh start, and so did the Wildcats.

After failing to make the second weekend of the NCAA Tournament for a fourth consecutive season, the man who led Kentucky to seven Elite Eights, four Final Fours and a national championship in his first 10 years realized it was time to move on. The glory days were long gone. Many fans had soured on Calipari. Barnhart, despite the forced-happy video together, had grown weary of the ratio of bravado to banners he’d been getting from the most important coach on campus. But breaking up would be complicated, and both sides seemed scared to divorce, just in case there was any chance to rekindle the old magic. When it was good, it was really good, after all.

So the odd couple trudged toward an uncomfortable 16th year together and Barnhart — either unwilling or unable to pay Calipari $33 million to go away – grit his teeth and said to the public (via the program’s TV partner) things like, “This notion we have no relationship and stuff like that is garbage. The way we’ve gotten through 15 years, it’s been pretty good. We’ve had some highs and lows and we’ve had some things that haven’t gone exactly the way we wanted to, but by and large, I’m sitting next to a guy that I brought here 15 years ago and we’ve been together just fine.”

Just fine is an apt description of the Kentucky program since 2020, and just fine isn’t where the Wildcats or Calipari want to live.

For the longest time, Calipari used to say 10 years was the max anyone could, or at least should, lead a program like Kentucky, considering the weight of expectation and the burden of so many non-basketball duties that come with that position. He said the job ages a coach in dog years, like the U.S. presidency. Yet, he blew through the 10-year barrier and couldn’t seem to face the fact that his returns had been diminishing since crossing that threshold. Calipari was hell-bent on doing it his way, recent results be damned, and that was never more evident than in the aftermath of his second first-round NCAA Tournament exit in the last three years.

He got bounced by 14th-seeded Oakland, which would be the worst tournament upset in program history if not for the 2022 loss to 15th-seeded Saint Peter’s, and bemoaned the mistakes made by such a young team. Then, when asked if these repeated postseason failures in an era when college basketball had trended extremely older might make him rethink the freshman-heavy roster construction, Calipari said, “I’ve done this with young teams my whole career, and it’s going to be hard for me to change that.”

He already had six freshmen signed for next season and was chasing a seventh. Cue “I Got You Babe” on the alarm-clock radio. Groundhog Day all over again. Rightly or wrongly, Kentucky fans absolutely did not want to hear, for the millionth time, “Wait ’til you see these freshmen coming in.”

At least at Arkansas, where one can reasonably assume Calipari will bring most of his No. 2-ranked recruiting class, that’ll be a fresh approach. His predecessor there, Eric Musselman, was more than capable of landing McDonald’s All-Americans, especially with those billionaires backing the Hogs. But he built most of his rosters on a different kind of rental player, via the transfer portal.

It can be intoxicating for a while to pile up elite recruiting classes and collect future NBA stars, and Kentucky was hooked on that feeling for a long time. But lately, waking up with a hangover on the first weekend of March Madness every year made it seem a lot less appealing. If Calipari wants to keep doing that, Arkansas has the resources to make sure he remains king of crootin’. (The odd thing about him claiming to need more investment from Kentucky, however, is he never stopped getting elite talent.) But in Lexington, if there’s trepidation about breaking the addiction to top-ranked signing classes, there shouldn’t be. What has all that talent done for the Cats since 2020? The next coach, with even average talent, can surely manage more than one win in both the SEC and NCAA tournaments over a four-year span.

The two teams playing for a national championship on Monday night, Connecticut and Purdue, have a combined one former five-star recruit on their rosters. Dan Hurley and Matt Painter are a combined 130-21 the last two seasons. Hurley has a chance to become the first back-to-back champion since Billy Donovan’s Florida Gators in 2006 and 2007. There are better ways to build a roster in this era of college basketball than the way Calipari has chosen. There are better ways to build a staff, too, than the buddy system Calipari has used. The Wildcats have seemed shockingly unprepared at times over the last four years, yet word from inside the program was that he had no intentions of shaking up his staff this offseason.

This isn’t about diminishing what Calipari once was at Kentucky. He made the Cats cool again. He added to the national title tally and had UK in the mix for a championship almost every year during that spectacular first decade. He was a force for good in the state, where his philanthropic spirit showed up again and again in times of need.

This isn’t about erasing all that good from his legacy. It’s about coming to grips with the fact that since 2020, Calipari was tarnishing that legacy. It’s about acknowledging, on both sides, that the ride was over and it was time to get off. And just when it looked like Calipari and Kentucky were going to give it one more whirl anyway, Arkansas stepped in and saved them from themselves.

(Photo: Tim Nwachukwu / Getty)