John Calipari's sad, strange Kentucky homecoming

The longtime Wildcats coach will come back to Rupp Arena Saturday as a much-diminished version of the conquering hero he was for so many years in Lexington

When I think of John Calipari’s final years as Kentucky’s men’s basketball coach, it isn’t a particular game that stands out.

It’s a picture.

Shortly after his team lost to North Carolina by 12 in Dec. 2020, Calipari showed up to his virtual postgame press conference wearing a leather jacket and a sad, weathered expression made all the more morose by the lighting on him and his grayer-than-usual hair.

With the Wildcats off to a 1-5 start to what would be the worst season of his career, the image was a sign of how much things had changed for Calipari. The man who had shaken up the sport of college basketball and struck fear in the hearts of many of its coaches had become a meme.

It’s that Calipari that will be at the center of a surreal scene Saturday.

Ten months after stunning much of the college basketball world by leaving Kentucky for Arkansas, Calipari will come back to Lexington and Rupp Arena when his Razorbacks take on the Wildcats. He’ll return to a building filled with blue-and-white-clad fans who once worshipped him as a hero, but over recent years, and as his teams no longer won at quite the same rate, he became something decidedly more flawed.

His first Arkansas team has only reinforced that. Despite owning a talented, high-priced roster, the Razorbacks are flailing, with a 12-8 overall record and a 1-6 mark in SEC play that has them near the bottom of the conference standings. To make matters worse, the program he left behind at Kentucky is thriving, with a 15-5 record, and a No. 12 national ranking as his successor, Mark Pope, is among the favorites for national coach of the year.

How things got to this point requires a bit of an explanation.

How John Calipari conquered Kentucky

In 2009, Kentucky basketball wasn’t at the nadir it was two decades earlier, when it was mired in NCAA scandal and had people openly wondering if the program should receive the death penalty, but it wasn’t exactly thriving, either.

A dominant force for much of the 1990s, the Wildcats hadn’t made a Final Four since it won a national championship in 1998. If Tubby Smith’s underwhelming results weren’t acceptable to Kentucky fans – five of Smith’s final eight teams at the school lost at least 10 games, prompting some in the commonwealth to refer to Smith as “10-Loss Tubby” – Billy Gillispie’s short-lived and disastrous two-year stint was something undeniably worse. In what would be his final season in 2008-09, the Wildcats missed the NCAA Tournament for the first time since 1991 and Gillispie was fired, with the school’s athletic director, Mitch Barnart, describing the union between Kentucky and Gillispie as a poor fit.

(On a somewhat related note: Gillispie’s ouster gave us one of the great local news segments of all-time, when a pair of Kentucky sportscasters chased Gillispie through the Wildcats’ basketball facility trying to get comment while Gillispie pretended like he was on a phone call).

The program wasn’t suffering – it was coming off a 22-win season – but it was stuck in a crisis of confidence.

With one move, that quickly changed.

After going 137-14 in his final four seasons, including a run to the national championship game in 2008, Calipari was brought over from Memphis to offer a much-needed jolt to the tradition-rich program.

He was able to do just that. Long before the transfer portal made rapid rebuilds possible, Calipari turned the Wildcats into a juggernaut overnight, signing the top two recruits in the country, John Wall and DeMarcus Cousins, and guiding Kentucky to a 35-3 record and an Elite Eight appearance.

It would only continue to get better, with Calipari doing effectively everything a Kentucky fan could ever hope for from its coach. In four of his first six seasons, the Wildcats made the Final Four. In 2012, in just his third season there, they won the program’s eighth national championship. Over his first 10 seasons, his teams averaged 30.5 wins per year. They routinely beat Rick Pitino and rival Louisville.

Perhaps most notably, he turned Kentucky into a conveyor belt for the sport’s best players, taking in top recruits, making them stars of successful teams for a year and sending them off to the NBA. Beginning with Wall and Cousins, the model worked exceptionally well. Over his 15 seasons, 37 former Wildcats were selected in the first round of the NBA Draft, 10 of whom have gone on to become all-stars.

In the process, he made Kentucky into something that, for all of its championships and past glory, it never had been previously – a cultural force that was the coolest program in the sport. Drake was attending Big Blue Madness, the program’s much-hyped preseason kickoff event, and even referencing the Wildcats in his songs. Jay-Z was showing up in Kentucky’s locker room. Wall convinced millions of uncoordinated, rhythm-less Kentuckians that they could dance simply by turning their wrists.

For a program that served as the all-white foil to Texas Western’s historic national title in 1966 and played games in an arena named after a coach who didn’t have a Black player until 1970, it was a seismic break.

In a stark contrast with Gillispie, a born-and-bred Texan who struggled with alcohol abuse and never seemed comfortable in the job, Calipari embraced everything that came with it, particularly after spending much of his career outside the sport’s upper crust at places like Memphis and UMass. If somebody could be built in a lab to handle the rigors and navigate the landmines that come with being the head coach at Kentucky, they’d look a whole lot like Calipari.

On the court, he could handle the onerous expectations. He’d shoulder the blame for losses, even as they became more inexplicable later in his tenure. He’d pull off the high-wire act of making teams built around inexperienced-but-wildly-talented players work as a harmonious unit. On his 2012 title team, which went 38-2, Anthony Davis, the national player of the year and the No. 1 overall pick in the NBA Draft, took the fourth-most shots.

Away from the court, he seemed to understand the heft of the role and how it transcended basketball. Heading into his first season, he flew helicopters into small towns across the state, logging hours at diners, gas stations and radio stations to ingratiate himself to the star-struck denizens of Big Blue Nation. He forged bonds with those in the state, like in 2022, when he held Kentucky’s annual Blue-White preseason game in flood-ravaged eastern Kentucky to raise funds for the area’s recovery efforts. A picture of one of the people there, a soot-covered coal miner with his young son, went viral, with Calipari eventually getting in touch with the man, Michael McGuire, and hosting his family for a game that season. The two sides still keep in touch.

A place described by Pitino as “Camelot” had its king. Until, eventually, it didn’t.

The downfall of John Calipari’s Kentucky empire

It was impossible to realize in the moment given that the Wildcats went into the day with a 38-0 record, but Kentucky’s loss to Wisconsin in the 2015 Final Four that ended the dream of a perfect season served as an unexpected turning point for Calipari’s tenure.

One former support staff member went so far as to say the game “broke him.” Given what followed, it’s not hyperbole.

It would be the final time the Wildcats would make the national semifinals under Calipari, with his teams failing to get back to the biggest stage in the sport in his final eight seasons in which there was a tournament. Only twice did they even advance to the Elite Eight. After averaging 31.7 wins in his first six seasons, Kentucky slipped to 24.4 wins in his final nine seasons. Even when the COVID-19-shortened 2020-21 season is taken out of the equation, that number still only rises to 26.4.

When the win totals stopped being so gaudy and the Final Four drought grew longer year after year, fissures started to emerge.

Even in the best times, his relationship with Kentucky fans was occasionally uneasy. In 2010, months after his stellar first season, the Wildcats had a record five players selected in the first round of the NBA Draft. Calipari called it “the biggest day in the history of Kentucky's program,” a statement that served as an effective recruiting pitch, but seemed hopelessly tone deaf coming from the coach of a program with seven national titles at the time and a fan base starving for an eighth.

As much as Kentucky fans enjoyed the parade of NBA players rolling through their program, some of them, at least in their more honest moments, longed for the days in which players stayed multiple years and they felt more of a genuine connection to them, as had been the case for many of the program’s most famous teams.

As losses became more frequent than they were earlier in his tenure, a man who once harnessed and thrived off the irrepressible passion of Kentucky fans soon started to lash out against it. He regularly feuded with Matt Jones, the host of the wildly popular Kentucky Sports Radio, who he believed was overly negative. He began having assistants fill in for him at press conferences and his weekly radio show. During a tough stretch one season, he referred to critical fans as “Basketball Bennies.”

It later stretched beyond basketball. Before a Jan. 2021 loss against Florida, Calipari, along with his staff, knelt and locked arms with players as the national anthem was played (the gesture came three days after the Capitol riot). While the players appreciated the support from their coach, it wasn’t nearly as well-received by the rest of the fan base in a state Donald Trump had won by 26 percentage points two months earlier.

“You’re losing fans left & right by doing such as this & also with making BLM videos,” one fan wrote in an email to university leadership. “Send the players on a tour of Iran, Iraq & Afghanistan & let them fear for their lives during bombings & all athletics dept. go with them. Perhaps that would help you mature a bit. You, Cal & the payers (sic) have such a shallow mind!!!”

(It didn’t help that the Wildcats lost the game in the middle of a miserably 9-16 season).

Calipari later alienated key allies in the Kentucky athletic department. It was widely reported that he and athletic director Mitch Barnhart had a strained relationship, though the two men denied it in an awkward sit-down interview with a local TV station late last March. When advocating for more resources to be poured into the basketball program in 2022, Calipari infamously said Kentucky was a “basketball school,” a hard-to-refute statement, but one that angered Wildcats football coach Mark Stoops, who clapped back at Calipari on social media by noting his program had made four consecutive bowl games.

With Calipari down with his team in the Bahamas for an exhibition tour, Barnhart and Stoops held a joint press conference back in Lexington in which the Kentucky AD said “we’ll make sure we’re not entitled” before cryptically adding that while basketball will always receive support from the school, “If that’s not good enough, you know, coaches change a lot in today’s world.”

Much of that could have been forgiven or forgotten with enough wins and enough deep tournament runs. The problem is, the latter of those didn’t occur.

Kentucky won just one tournament game in Calipari’s final four seasons, missing the event altogether one year and suffering a pair of inexcusable results once in March Madness. As a No. 2 seed in 2022, a Wildcats team led by Oscar Tshiebwe, the national player of the year, were stunned by No. 15 seed St. Peter’s in the first round. Two years later, another shocking result awaited, this time as a No. 3 seed against No. 14 seed Oakland, which got 10 3-pointers and 32 points off the bench from Jack Gohlke in a 80-76 victory over Calipari’s vaunted squad.

For many Kentucky fans, it was a breaking point. That 2023-24 team, led by a native son in Reed Sheppard and behind one of the sport’s most explosive offenses, seemed different, like a squad that functionally and stylistically broke Calipari out of a years-long malaise. But if the same disappointment followed in March, why continue the charade with a coach a rapidly decreasing number of people believed still had the juice he once did?

For a fleeting moment, the two appeared destined to be stuck in an unhappy marriage, with Calipari’s $33 million buyout too financially onerous to make a move. Then, an old friend from Arkansas called and within a few days, Calipari was headed to Fayetteville, ushering in the end of the second-longest coaching tenure in Kentucky history – and in a way nobody could have foreseen.

After 15 mostly transformative years, Calipari was gone…for at least 10 more months.

The awkward return that awaits

At the time it was made, the split was widely hailed as mutually beneficial.

Kentucky got to bring in a new coach to a stagnant program – eventually landing Mark Pope, a captain on the Wildcats’ 1996 national championship team whose introductory press conference was turned into a sold-out pep rally at Rupp Arena – while Calipari got the oft-referenced “fresh start,” an opportunity for a more motivated and energized version of himself to show he still had it.

So far, only one side has gotten to enjoy the benefits.

Few teams in the sport this season have been bigger disappointments than Arkansas. The Razorbacks were a preseason top-20 team and have a roster believed to be worth a collective $7 million between several of Calipari’s Kentucky holdovers, the nation’s No. 3 recruiting class and a couple of prized transfers. Despite that, the Razorbacks didn’t pick up their first conference victory until Jan. 22 and prior to that, the second-highest-ranked team they had beaten was Lipscomb. They head into Saturday’s contest with six losses in their past seven games.

Many of the on-court critiques of Calipari by Kentucky fans that were rejected by the coach late in his run at the school appear to be validated, at least almost three months into his first season in his new home.

Calipari’s patented dribble-drive offense is more restrictive and tightly controlled than it was earlier in his career, when guards like Wall, Derrick Rose, Devin Booker and De’Aaron Fox were given more leeway to fully utilize their immense talent. After his final Kentucky team led the country in 3-point percentage, his first Arkansas squad has reverted to what many of Calipari’s late-stage teams had been from beyond the arc. Entering Friday, it was making just 32.5% of its 3s, the 226th-best mark of 364 Division I teams.

“There’s just no fear now when I see him on the other sideline,” one SEC head coach told Hoops HQ. “The game has changed and he is becoming archaic.”

It’s a set of shortcomings that sets the stage for this weekend.

It won’t be the first time that a former Wildcats coach has come back to face his old program, meaning Saturday’s game, while a spectacle, won’t be that unique.

In Dec. 2021, Smith brought his High Point team to Rupp Arena, marking the first time he had been back to coach since leaving for Minnesota after the 2006-07 season. During a pre-game ceremony, he had his jersey retired and received a hearty ovation from the crowd, a much kinder treatment than he received for much of his 10-year stint there.

Twenty years earlier, Pitino (understandably) received a much more hostile reception.

In his first game back at Rupp Arena since becoming the Louisville coach earlier that year, Pitino was greeted with a slew of less-than-flattering signs from fans, including one that listed Pitino’s name with famous historical traitors like Benedict Arnold, Judas Iscariot and John Walker Lindh. With fans and media gathered near the visitors’ entrance to the court for Pitino’s much-anticipated walk out to the court, Pitino instead came out largely undetected through the tunnel Kentucky’s coaches use. It was merely a stall tactic. When he was introduced over the public-address system, he was loudly and passionately booed.

“He's a traitor,'' Kentucky fan Linda Horton said to the Associated Press. “For him to choose Louisville, it means he couldn't care less about what he accomplished at Kentucky. I would've respected him choosing any other school, even Tennessee. But not Louisville.''

The scene that greeted Pitino back in 2001 tells us little, if anything, about what Calipari will face Saturday.

Not only had Pitino gone from the Wildcats to their most hated rival, with a failed stop in the NBA in between, but he left at the zenith of his tenure, with Kentucky coming off back-to-back national championship games. He was beloved, with his exit causing pain that increased exponentially when he ended up at a hated foe a few years later. Calipari, meanwhile, was beating the proverbial posse, with much of his goodwill he had built up with the fan base exhausted. It wasn’t feasible to fire him, so, in the next-best possible scenario, he left.

For much of this week, there has been a debate raging in Kentucky about how Calipari should be treated. He helped earn several of the banners that will hover high above him Saturday, but for many, those are a distant memory, clouded by the anger and frustration his final years in Lexington engendered.

Calipari isn’t worth pity – he’s making $7 million a year to coach basketball, after all – but given his struggles thus far at Arkansas and the increasingly likely possibility his teams won’t be a consistent threat to the Wildcats in the SEC in the years to come, he probably isn’t worth booing, either.

It’s awfully telling about the once-unimaginable place where he finds himself now.

(Photos: Getty Images, Lexington Herald-Leader)