John Calipari’s time at Kentucky was special. During his 15 seasons with the Wildcats he took them to 32 tournament wins, seven Elite Eights, eight Sweet 16s, and four Final Fours. In 2015 when he advanced to the Final Four for the fourth time in five years, he joined Mike Krzyzewski and John Wooden. During his time he had 4 championships 2011, 2012, 2014, 2015. When he has been ranked #1 in the AP Poll his team is 110-13, that does include his time with Memphis and UMass.
His players that have lead him to these impeccable seasons have gone very high in the draft. He has had 47 draft pics, 35 first rounders, three first overall pics, 15 top 10 pics and 23 lottery selections. Anthony Davis to the New Orleans Pelicans in 2012, Karl-Anthony Towns to the Minnesota Timberwolves in 2015, John Wall to the Washington Wizards in 2010. Other very notable NBA players out of Kentucky include DeMarcus Cousins, Rajon Rondo, Devin Booker, Shai Gilgeous-Alexander, Tyler Herro, Tyrese Maxey, Jamal Murray, Julius Randle, and Bam Adebayo.
He was the highest payed college basketball coach making 8.53 million. In 2019 he has signed a 10 year contract extension with an average annual value of 8.6 million a year. He was the highest payed coach by a margin of more than 2 million.
Calipari’s time at Kentucky has come to a close as he has taken the Arkansas head basketball coach. Eric Musselman who was the previous coach is headed to USC. Coach Cal his allegedly singing a 5 year deal, amount is still unknown. This deal is going to be beneficial for both of these schools and coach Cal. Many fans are very happy about this. When Jon Yunt was asked about how he feels about the change he said, “what has he done for us as of late, and that’s 3 million of the table.” And then was waving his hand as a wave goodbye.
Cal was seen walking his dog around his neighborhood when someone asked him about the move and he said that he was not going to comment on it at this time as he is walking his dog and then walked away from that person.
Whoever will be the next Kentucky coach will have some big shoes to fill. Scott Drew, Tommy Lloyd, Bruce Pearl, and Buzz Williams are all some of the options to refill the job. There was talk about Nate Oats and Dan Hurley but they both shut down those speculations very quickly as Dan Hurley said that he is focused on going for three Championships in a row. This also has nothing to do with this but Dan Hurley and UCONN are 12-0 against the spread in the past two tournaments.
