Cincinnati Sports News

Cincinnati Sports News

Kentucky’s John Calipari tells Duke’s Coach K he copied his one-and-done approach

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By ADAM ZAGORIA

John Calipari and Mike Krzyzewski enjoyed a rivalry on the recruiting trail and the basketball court, especially once the one-and-done era began in college basketball.

Calipari pioneered the recruiting of one-and-done players while at Memphis and then brought it to Kentucky.

After Coach K, who retired in 2022, coached the U.S. Olympic team to the first of three gold medals in 2008, he began to recruit one-and-done type players to Duke, knowing that he needed the most talented players to contend for titles.

Appearing on Coach K’s podcast, Calipari said he called out Coach K for copying his approach.

“He said something about playing young players. I said, “Yeah, I’ve always done it. You copied us, and then you started playing young players,” Calipari said.

The only programs to win an NCAA championship while relying heavily on one-and-dones were Kentucky in 2012 with Anthony Davis and Michael Kidd-Gilchrist and then Duke in 2015 with Jahlil Okafor, Tyus Jones and Justice Winslow.

Coach K had 24 of his 26 one-and-done players after 2010, including a slew of top-3 picks in Kyrie Irving (2011), Jabari Parker (2014), Okafor (2015), Brandon Ingram (2016), Jayson Tatum (2017), Marvin Bagley III (2018) and Zion Williamson and R.J. Barrett (2019).

In 2018, I asked Coach K if his philosophy on recruiting had changed in the one-and-done era.

“As far as recruiting, I think you’re always adjusting,” Coach K said then. “In four decades of recruiting, there are a lot of things that change and you have to adapt to along the way. Obviously the biggest thing in the last decade is the one-and-done but also the number of transfers and especially the graduate transfer.

“So guys are recruiting now not just high school players, they’re recruiting college players. Or trying to find out if kids are available and that will go to an even much higher level if they bring about the thing with immediate transfer, which will create another amazing level of change for our sport.” (That, of course, has happened and it’s drastically changed the sport, adversely impacting the recruiting of high school players.)

While recruiting one-and-dones, Coach K and his staff were only with the players for about 10 months and also had to recruit more often than they did in previous eras.

“We’re looking for kids who can really play and are good academically and are going to be good kids,” he said. “That profile for the guys in our program hasn’t changed since the early ’80s. But how long you have them and what you try to do during the year, especially if they’ve committed to you, to establish even a stronger relationship before they get here and then work at it while they’re here because you’re condensing a four-year relationship into about a 10-month relationship once you get the youngster on campus.”

Coach K said he knew he was selling a “great product.”

“I’m not saying we’re the only ones who have a great product,” he said. “But one of the great schools in the world, Duke University and we have a global student body. It’s a great student body. And then we’ve been good. We’ve produced really good players. Guys who’ve come in here with talent have gotten better and we’ve had a lot of pros and we’ve had a lot of success. So we have quite a bit to talk about with a youngster and pretty much a proven track record. I’m not saying we’re the only ones who do that, but we’re one of them so we should be able to recruit good players.”

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