Cal’s journey to the top: Coach’s path leads him to the Bluegrass

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John Calipari was introduced as UK’s 22nd men’s basketball coach on April 1. Calipari takes over for the Cats after leading Memphis to a Final Four two seasons ago. Photo by Zach Brake | Staff

John Calipari has many accomplishments during his journey as a college basketball head coach. He was the 2009 Sports Illustrated National Coach of the Year, a three-time Conference-USA Coach of the Year and mere seconds away from winning a national championship, among many other accolades.

For Calipari, the road has been long and featured many ups and downs. He took the University of Massachusetts to the Final Four before giving the NBA a shot, a brief experience that lasted just over two seasons and featured a playoff appearance. At Memphis, Calipari won conference tournaments regularly and turned the Tigers into national championship contenders. Now, the coach who watched a Final Four two rows from the top of Rupp Arena in 1985, is coaching on her sidelines.

“I got up and walked into (assistant coach) John Robic’s office and the lights in the building were on,” Calipari said. “I looked out there, saw Kentucky, saw those banners, and I looked at Robes and I said, ‘Robes, we’re at Kentucky, we’re coaching at Kentucky,’ we both just bust out laughing.”

Now that he’s at UK, Calipari said the journey had a lot to do with fate if nothing else. Calipari’s former team, Memphis, held a decisive lead with two minutes remaining in the 2008 National Championship, the same season the Cats hired former head coach Billy Gillispie. After a Mario Chalmers 3-pointer with less than one second remaining, the lead was gone and the Tigers ended up losing their opportunity at their first men’s basketball national championship.

Calipari was watching when Kentucky-native Kenny Perry lost in the playoffs of the Masters, and called Perry to tell him he’s been there before and that Perry’s loss was fate and you just have to deal with it and march on.

“They say, ‘Are you mad you didn’t have the job two years ago?’ If I had the job two years ago, I wouldn’t have lived the last two years of my life, coaching the team I had,” Calipari said. “I would not trade those two years for even coming to Kentucky, now that I see it. The only thing I regret is I would have had one year with Mr. Bill; that I kind of regret. The reality of it is, fate happens.”

Calipari said the goal now that he’s at UK is to return the Cats to the program they once were, and bring back the aura of UK basketball. Calipari grew up about 200 yards away from his high school, at the bottom of a hill. He grew up around coaches, serving as the ball boy and bat boy in third grade and traveling with the high school baseball team. To this day you can find Calipari’s high school coaches at his games, saying they were like second fathers to him.

With the recruiting battles for the country’s top talent raging on at a fervent level, Calipari said he’s gotten a chance to explore the “great” UK campus and search for a new house, which he said he thinks he’s found.

Calipari has inherited possibly the most high-profile job in the state of Kentucky, but said he doesn’t like to look at those things. He said he doesn’t listen to talk radio and doesn’t like to see his face in print because his nose is big. For Calipari, the profession isn’t something that’s life or death and isn’t something that he needs to do, it’s something that he wants to do because he realizes the potentials. In order to reach those potentials, though, Calipari said you have to enjoy the journey you take to get there.

“I’m here because I’m chasing dreams, I’m here because it’s Kentucky and I want to have a ball with this. I want the students to have fun. If it causes any angst, turn off the TV, if it causes anxiety that’s because of anger, turn off the radio, because what this program is supposed to bring is joy, to everybody, to the state,” Calipari said. “It’s about the path and enjoying the path, if everything is about the prize, you don’t enjoy life.”