This is the best UK news since 1996 and 1998.
According to more sources than I can count, Coach Calipari IS the next Basketball Coach at the University of Kentucky.
WELCOME!
And may the Gods grant you TREMENDOUS SUCCESS and DOMINANCE over all you survey…
GO BIG BLUE!!!
I could not be happier with the way things have turned out. This makes the past 4 years seem as if naught but a moment has passed.
UK is back!
I’ll say it again.
UK IS BACK!!!
GET READY. Kentucky is going to start cuttin’ some nets!
Jay Bilas on why Calipari should go to UK
Calipari, 252-69 in nine seasons at Memphis and 445-140 overall, was named the Sports Illustrated coach of the year before the start of the NCAA tournament, the first time he received SI’s award. Calipari was the Naismith coach of the year last season, joining Duke’s Mike Krzyzewski as the only coaches to be named twice to the award since its inception in 1987.
Calipari went 193-71 in eight seasons at Massachusetts from 1988 to 1996, culminating with an Elite Eight appearance in ’95 and a trip to the Final Four in ’96.
Calipari, a graduate of Clarion State (Pa.) in 1982, also coached the NBA’s New Jersey Nets from 1996 to ’98, going 72-112 before his ouster early in the 1998-99 season.
Calipari attracts his own set of assumptions.
But he can absolutely coach. And in the two years since I wrote my last take on whether he should come to UK, he has shown that he can take a team to the elite level, and that he can attract some of the best talent in college basketball and craft a system in which that talent can thrive.
I suppose if you’re UK, the best case scenario is that Calipari can use the power of the program’s prestige to get in on the very best talent every year, and that the program’s in-place safeguards can ward off some of the less-savory assumptions, if not elements. You bank on the fact that the NCAA has not stuck anything on Calipari in his blindingly successful time in Memphis.
But you’d also better understand — those assumptions that follow Calipari, will now attach themselves to your program. Which, while among the most storied in college basketball, is also one of the most penalized in college basketball.
I suppose my bottom line is that I have more of an appreciation for Calipari as a coach than I had two years ago.
The reward — big-time success and exposure — is a given. But the spotlight at Kentucky is very bright. And if anything turns up in the glare, fans in Lexington need only cast a glance up to Bloomington to see the risks involved.
It’s still a risk for UK. But it appears to be a Cal-culated risk that UK may well be ready to take.
IT IS OFFICIAL!!! COACH CAL is now Coach of the Big Blue Nation!
GO CATS!!!
GO BIG BLUE!!!
Take a moment and let me know how you feel about this hire. I know I”m excited as hell. And don’t worry. No comment will be censored. I’d just like to know how the BBN feels about the hire.
Peace, Dave
(reporting from Afghanistan. lol)
