In his decade-and-a-half at Kentucky, John Calipari made his mark on the historic basketball program. But he’s smart enough to know that he didn’t leave the school on the best of terms with everyone.
In a recent interview, Coach Cal acknowledged that while some fans were happy, he’s heard others say that the team didn’t win enough during his 15 seasons and that one national title and four trips to the Final Four wasn’t enough.
“I think some people were happy,” Calipari said, via CBS Sports. “(Some say) ‘We’ve had this guy 15 years and we’ve only won 500 games.’ We only won one national title and four Final Fours and eight Elite Eights? What the hell is going on here?’”
He can laugh it off all he wants, but Kentucky fans tend to judge their coaches by how they perform in March and hopefully April, not how they do between the Fall and early Spring.
In the past six years, Calipari never finished outside the top three in the regular season other than the pandemic-shortened 2019-20 and 2020-21 seasons. But of the four NCAA Tournament trips the team made in that span, only one of them took the Wildcats out of the first weekend.
For a program that holds itself to a higher standard and parted ways with multiple coaches who failed to reach that standard, there were a lot of people making the case that the team’s last three NCAA Tournament disappointments were grounds for dismissal.
Calipari was able to get out of Kentucky and get another big bag from SEC rival Arkansas immediately, so he is a lot luckier than a lot of other coaches in that regard.