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Where is Juan Calipari? Longtime Kentucky basketball coach now in Arkansas

Sakege November 12, 2024

As was the case with many of its predecessors, the Champions Classic 2024 will feature many stories.

Kansasthe number 1 preseason team in the USA TODAY Sports Coaches Pollwill compete in the event. DukeLed by freshman phenom Cooper Flagg and a top-ranked 2024 recruiting class, he will play his first big game of the season. Michigan Stateat first it reaches 30^th season with Tom Izzo, will also be there.

Then there is Kentucky.

What could be the most historically successful program in college basketball will be one of the most fascinating to follow during the 2024-25 season. Not only will the Wildcats have a completely remade roster, but they will also be led by a new coach.

During the offseason, Mark Pope left BYU to take over his alma mater, where he played on Kentucky’s famed 1996 national championship team, considered by many to be one of the greatest teams in sports history.

So where does that leave John Calipari, the man who coached the Wildcats from 2009 to 2024? Here’s what you need to know about Calipari and where it is now:

Where is Juan Calipari?

For 15 years, Calipari was the face of Kentucky basketball.

During that time, he rebuilt and remade the Wildcats. After taking over a program that performed poorly in its final seasons under Tubby Smith and during Billy Gillispie’s ill-fated two-year run, Calipari led Kentucky to the Final Four in four of his first six seasons, a career highlighted by a national title in 2012, the program’s first in 14 years.

Along the way, he helped reinvent not only Kentucky’s identity, but the sport as a whole, revamping its roster annually and replenishing it with a parade of blue-chip recruiting classes filled with players like John Wall, Anthony Davis, DeMarcus Cousins. and Devin Booker, who would spend a season at the school before heading to the NBA, where many of them were top draft picks.

However, in what seemed like an instant, it disappeared.

In April, Calipari left the Wildcats to become Arkansas’ new head coach in one of the most surprising moves of the 2024 coaching carousel.

He didn’t just move to Fayetteville. Calipari brought with him a handful of Kentucky’s top returning players, such as guard DJ Wagner, forward Adou Thiero and big man Zvonimir Ivišić, along with prized recruits such as Boogie Fland, Karter Knox and Billy Richmond III, all of whom they had previously committed to Kentucky. Calipari left.

A once unthinkable move within the SEC was made possible by a confluence of factors.

Despite all he had accomplished at Kentucky, Calipari’s teams were producing diminishing returns later in his tenure. Although they came close on multiple occasions, the Wildcats never returned to the Final Four under Calipari after 2015, when what had been an undefeated team was upset by Wisconsin in the national semifinals.

In recent years, these problems have increased. During the pandemic-altered 2020-21 season, Kentucky went just 9-16, its worst single-season winning percentage since 1926-27. Although they bounced back to reach the NCAA Tournament in each of the last three seasons, including twice as a top-three seed, they won just one postseason game during that stretch and never advanced beyond the tournament’s opening weekend. . Those struggles were exemplified by a pair of stunning first-round exits, with Kentucky falling as a runner-up to Saint Peter’s in 2022 and a third-place finish to Oakland in 2024. Those upsets raised questions not just about Calipari’s first-place finish. ready system, which pitted first-year squads against more veteran and experienced teams in the postseason, but Calipari himself. Was he still the right man for such a demanding job with justifiably high expectations?

As frustration grew among Kentucky fans after the loss to Oakland, Calipari met with athletic director Mitch Barnhart at the end of the season, after which Barnhart announced that Calipari would return for a 16^th season. At the time, it seemed like a fragile and supposedly unhappy marriage was going to continue.

Then a viable alternative for Calipari emerged.

After Eric Musselman left for USC, Arkansas needed a new basketball coach and finally turned its sights on Calipari. The Wildcats coach was interested. The Razorbacks have a successful history, including a national championship in 1994, and a passionate fan base that routinely fills Bud Walton Arena. Calipari also had a personal connection to the school, as he is a longtime friend of Arkansas mega-booster John Tyson, CEO of Tyson Foods.

After the conversations, an agreement was reached with Calipari signing a five-year contract which starts with a scheduled value of $38 million.

“This is my dream job” Calipari said in a video to Kentucky fans. released him after it was revealed that he had accepted the job in Arkansas. “It was my dream job. Anyone in our profession looks at the University of Kentucky in basketball and says, “That’s the bluest of the blue.” In recent weeks we’ve realized that this show probably needs to hear another voice. And fans need to hear another voice. “We loved being here, but we think it’s time for us to step away and get away from the program completely.”

Although Calipari didn’t inherit much after arriving at Arkansas, in his introductory press conference he said, “I met with the team. “There is no team.” – brought back parts of his Kentucky roster, much of what would have been the Wildcats’ 2024 recruiting class and some high-profile transfers like Florida Atlantic’s Johnell Davis and Tennessee’s Jonas Aidoo to put together a team that entered the 16th season in the coaches poll.

John Calipari Record

Calipari was 410-123 in his 15 seasons at Kentucky.

In his career, which included stops at UMass and Memphis before Kentucky and Arkansas, he has an overall record of 856-264. Along with Rick Pitino, he is one of only two Division I coaches to ever coach three different programs to the Final Four.