CBSSports.com columnist Gregg Doyel said college basketball as you know it is over.
He said this in his column following the University of Kentucky’s hire of John Calipari to be their men’s basketball coach on April 1.
This statement may seem a little far-fetched, but it is not.
Calipari has won everywhere he has been and he has the personality to handle all of the off-court things that come with being the head coach at one of the most prolific college basketball programs in NCAA Men’s Division I history.
This is a match made in heaven.
People can question Calipari’s somewhat shady past, but the fact is the guy’s name has never been mentioned in NCAA sanctions.
It should be noted the University of Massachusetts, where Calipari coached from 1988-1996, had to vacate its 1996 Final Four appearance because the star of the team, Marcus Camby, violated NCAA rules by taking gifts from an agent.
Another knock is that Calipari recruited talented players, but at times these players seemed to have character issues. Calipari argued he was trying to help these kids by giving them a chance.
In order to win at the level he did before he took the University of Kentucky job, one has to take a chance on some talented players that other schools may have passed on because of off-court reasons. Calipari will not have to take these kinds of chances at the University of Kentucky and this will be a non-issue.
Although Calipari seems to have a gray cloud over his head and the University of Kentucky has had its share of run-ins with the NCAA, this will not be a problem.
University of Kentucky Athletic Director Mitch Barnhart had too much at stake with this hire to take a chance on someone he feels will run the risk of getting the Cats in trouble with the NCAA.
Now that the negative stuff is out of the way, here is why Calipari is a grand slam hire for the University of Kentucky.
Calipari amassed a 446-139 record in his previous two college jobs at University of Massachusetts and the University of Memphis and took UMass to the aforementioned 1996 Final Four and Memphis to the 2008 championship game.
Neither one of these schools has close to the tradition or resources of the University of Kentucky.
Along with his propensity to win at lesser programs, he has also been able to bring in high-level recruits in each one of his stops. The mix of these two could be very dangerous to the college basketball landscape as we know it.
He had the best recruiting classes in the country slated to go to Memphis and the best high school point guard in the nation, John Wall, was strongly considering going to Memphis.
There are rumors a couple of his recruits, as well as Wall, will end up in Lexington and if this is the case the Cats are instantly national contenders, especially if Jodie Meeks and Patrick Patterson do not enter the NBA Draft.
It has been reported the downfall of the Wildcats’ previous coach, Billy Gillispie, was not the team’s disappointing season that ended with a loss to the University of Notre Dame in the NIT, but his inability to handle the off-court responsibilities of being the head coach of the University of Kentucky.
Gillispie had many noted run-ins with both local and national media and following a game in the SEC Tournament he said he did not feel as if it was his job to be an ambassador for the program.
Calipari seems to be the polar opposite of Gillispie in regard to this situation, as he demonstrated in his press conference on April 1, where he was officially named as University of Kentucky basketball coach.
In addition to his seamless handling of the media, Calipari was not only the coach, but he was a noticeable member of the community in Memphis. This will help his persona in the public eye, where as Gillispie turned many people against him just by his lack of ability to develop interpersonal relationships with the right people.
So he can coach, recruit and handle the media, but he also brings with him an up-tempo style of play that Cat fans have yearned for since Rick Pitino left following the 1997 season.
Calipari’s offense is called the dribble-drive-motion and he said it allows players to be themselves as they create opportunities for themselves and teammates off the dribble.
This style of play is what attracted many of the best players in the country to Memphis and will likely attract the same type of players to Kentucky.
John Calipari’s press conference was eerily similar to the one when Rick Pitino took the job in 1989, and Calipari will likely enjoy as much, if not more, success as Pitino as the coach of the Cats.
By ERIC MCGUFFIN
Editor
demcguff@ius.edu