Kentucky basketball head coach John Calipari has had a ton of success with the Wildcats in his career as he has been to four Finals Fours with the team and they won it all back in 2012. However, he hasn't taken Kentucky to a Final Four since 2015. The Wildcats have had some good teams since them, but they have fallen victim to some brutal March Madness upsets in recent years. There were rumblings about Kentucky moving on from Calipari after this year's loss to Oakland, but he is staying put.
John Calipari is a Hall of Fame basketball coach and he signed a lifetime contract with Kentucky basketball. However, the Wildcats can always buyout of the contract, and there were rumors that it could happen this offseason. However, Calipari will be in Lexington for at least one more season.
There have also been some rumors that Calpari and Kentucky athletic director Mitch Barnhart don't have a good relationship. The two of them recently did an interview together and noted that their relationship is just fine.
“To his point, that is part of this deal,” Mitch Barnhart said during the interview. “This notion that we have no relationship and stuff like that is garbage. The way we’ve gotten through 15 years has been pretty good. We’ve had our highs and lows, and we’ve had some things that haven’t gone exactly the way we wanted to, but by and large, I’m sitting next to the guy I brought here 15 years ago. We’ve been together just fine.”
Obviously, everything isn't perfect and the two of them aren't going to see eye-to-eye on everything, but they have both been at Kentucky for a long time, and they know how to manage a healthy relationship.
“That’s a little bit of the misinformation out there,” Barnhart said. “I say this jokingly and seriously: he’s been married 40-plus years and I’ve been married 40-plus years. We know how to manage relationships. I think we’ve been together for 15, so we’re sort of like semi-married.”
Kentucky does need to be better in March
John Calipari is staying put as the head coach of the Kentucky basketball team, but he does need to be better in March, and he knows that. It's not like his team is consistently struggling in the regular season, but they have been on the wrong side of some brutal upsets in recent years.
“Cal’s averaged 27 wins a year since he’s been here,” Barnhart continued. “We got to a spot this year, [where] we had some incredible victories and then we get to March and we stubbed our toe a little bit. There’s no mystery in that. We’ve had a couple of times down the stretch that we want to be better in March – there’s no mystery in that, either. Our fans know what the standard is; we know what the standard is.”
Kentucky is still typically one of the best teams in the SEC and they look like they're positioning themselves for good runs in the tournament, but it just hasn't panned out. Their situation is quite similar to Purdue's right now. Great regular seasons, but March Madness has been a different story. The Boilermakers seems to be getting over the hump this year, and the Wildcats need to find a way to do it soon as well.
“It’s not that we don’t know how to get there, [but] we’ve hit a patch where we haven’t, and that is not lost on us,” Barnhart added. “He and I are a little bit competitive – we certainly like to win. That has been in our DNA from the beginning of his career and mine. We didn't come to this program to sit here and say: let’s casually sit here and sashay all the way to the end of the deal. I want to win.”
Next season is going to a big one for John Calipari and the Kentucky basketball team. The pressure will certainly be on, and if the Wildcats fail to make a run next season, Calipari might in some trouble.
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