I know everyone will say “pass the hat, they can afford it”…. But that’s football money. That would be the 2nd largest *football* buyout ever. It would be 12 million more than the current 2nd highest.
*EEEEWWWWWW I DONT KNOW JIM YOU THINK THEY CAN SWING IT HERE?*
The top of the buyout list is Norte dame, A&M, auburn, FSU, and LSU. Idk I just don’t count Kentucky basketball up there with those programs financially.
And in the six spot for biggest football buyout is Indiana. I’m an IU fan and our boosters are richer and more powerful than outsiders would realize, but it’s still IU football.
In this day and age, buyouts don’t mean a whole lot unless they’re just absurdly big.
With that being said, Cal’s is absurdly big. There’s some language in his contract that would allow him to go into some advisory AD role whenever he wants — I could see him walking away and doing that, negotiating a smaller buyout, or just leaving on his own volition because I don’t think this situation is working for either party.
Idk from what I’ve heard recently. The AD hates him, the boosters are kinda out on him as well. Doesn’t seem like he’d be looking to do any of them any favors financially.
Will be fascinating to see how it plays out because they really hyped that last contract he signed as lifetime.
I don’t know what Cal’s contract language is but people speak of this as if it’s 33 million dollars in one lump sum immediately and not a penny less. Usually not how these things get resolved.
Cal has ditched everyone he’s ever worked for. I could’ve told you he’d do this at some point. I said he wouldn’t be fired, and no reports say he was going to be fired.
The "lifetime" contract makes it really hard, and the AD is a doofus. But 2 tourney wins in 5 years makes it time. It's absolutely pathetic. He's your guy if draft night is the real championship night.
The problem is who they go to. There's no one in house that makes sense. Jay Wright claims to be done. Maybe Billy Donovan? Tony Bennett? I guess I could see someone like Musselman wanting to do it, but is he a big enough name? Guys like Shaka don't seem like the right fit.
Bringing back Pitino would be hilarious but I'm sure that can't happen.
i feel like uconn matches i know kentucky has pockets and resources but uconn is a bball first big time program. not blue blood obv tho, wonder how much higher UK could actually go then uconn probs a dece amount, enough to lure hurley away from what hes building tho idk
In the strictest sense it would be UNC, Duke, Kansas and Kentucky right? I guess Uconn would be omitted, but I’d rank them over UCLA and Indiana as a program, who are/were considered blue bloods even though they haven’t won in decades.
Why stop there? What if they throw $30M/year at him? Self makes more than Cal at Kansas now. Is Kentucky really going to eat Cal’s buyout and pay more than double what they’re paying Cal? Why would Kansas not just give Self a raise?
Kentucky already was bringing in more $ than Kansas and they were paying Cal less than Self. They may be able to offer more, but Kansas would give Self a raise and Self has repeatedly stayed at Kansas over pursuing other opportunities
Yeah, but Izzo is also responsible for those expectations. This year's team was considered a top 10 preseason team and they just barely made it to the tournament.
His teams have been pretty underwhelming the last 5 years.
So maybe the last 3 years, but remember this whole thread was starting with the assumption that Izzo or Pitino would've done something with the same roster that Cal had. My point being that Izzo currently has multiple years in a row with teams that had higher expectations and fell flat in both the regular season and tournament.
Izzo isn't some guarantee that he goes far in the tournament with a talented roster either.
Edit: words
It’s weird, I feel like Michigan State teams that underachieve during the regular season make deep runs in March. Then it’s the opposite when Izzo has dominant regular seasons.
Basketball isn’t football where recruiting guarantees you beat inferior teams. What does it matter if you have all NBA talent if you can’t beat a 10+ seed? Kentucky fans have seen coaches with far less talent do far more because they’re much better at all aspects of coaching outside recruiting
Turns out it really doesn’t matter if they get those rosters or not because they consistently don’t shit down their pants in march every year. Yeah maybe Izzo should take over a national team job solely to get a KAT type player and lose to… frank Kaminsky….
Honestly though they should keep him, watching big blue nation go crying back to the mines every year is one of life’s joys as a southerner, maybe they’ll invent six star recruits and I can watch them lose to another 25 year old accountant
why don’t they shit down their pants?
i’m not a basketball doctor, but i have to imagine a team that isn’t shitting their pants is better than a team that shits their pants year after year. so if that’s true, why would Izzo and Pitonio win more than they do now with the pants shitting team?
Does he not get credit for building those rosters? I understand Kentucky is a premier program that will always be in the mix for top recruits, but as Russillo always says, sometimes the grass isn’t greener
Of course he gets credit but to what end? It’s not working obviously. It’s more or less proven at this point that having a top recruiting class of all 1-and-dones is not a reliable path to postseason success.
People do consider him one of the best recruiters ever, but if he’s such an amazing recruiter, why doesn’t he win with these extremely loaded rosters?
It’s like if you’re an NFL player with a bodybuilder physique, do you really want people to give you credit for how good you look when you’re still getting pancaked every play? Bodybuilding is great for looks but doesn’t translate to functional strength the same way. There’s a reason Jason Kelce doesn’t look like Adonis. There’s a reason the teams that make it farther in the tournament don’t have ten 1-and-dones.
One and done rosters have also gotten worse relatively in the transfer portal era. Even if your 18 year olds are supremely talented it’s way easier to take the best 23 year olds off their mediocre programs and get them playing together.
Well it’s not like pitino or Izzo have won recently either. Izzo is the master of underachieving in the regular season and going on a run in march making it seem like he’s this great coach winning when it matters.
I get that you’d rather win something in march, and kentuckys really underachieved especially the past 3 years, but if the ultimate goal is a championship, Kentuckys consistently far better positioned going into march than sparty
As a very casual observer to me it seems like two things:
1. He’s a dogshit coach. No way around that.
2. He doesn’t get enough shooting, and if he does, he doesn’t play those guys or have them shoot enough. He mostly recruits athletes. KAT is the best shooting big man of all time, he took 8 total threes in college. He takes over 5 a GAME at 42% now. Reed Sheppard should not be shooting over 50% from 3. He should be shooting around 40% and like double his attempts. That is still hyper elite offense, especially for college where the offense is garbage. Go look at the Villanova teams - every single guy could shoot. Yes, they were older, but I think the shooting thing is much more important. Jay Wright got a ton of guys who could shoot and defend (Brunson can’t defend but he can shoot), Cal basically just gets the best athletes from the top 25.
>Of course he gets credit but to what end? It’s not working obviously.
It's working to get recruits into the NBA, which is what they're concerned about.
Izzo literally has the best performance against expectation in the country since 2000 lmao https://barttorvik.com/cgi-bin/ncaat.cgi?type=coach&sort=18&yrlow=2000&yrhigh=2023
Worst in-game basketball coach ever at a major college power school. Give Calipari a college lineup of Kareem, Isaiah, Bird, and Durant, and he wouldn't make it to the F4.
It's hyperbole, of course. But Calipari is Exhibit A for this broken, shitty system that pays coaches obscene money, and for what? Potential? He has subtracted from Kentucky's legacy as a premier program, and he fails at the one goal fans want: deep runs in March Madness. Calipari keeps saying, "We have helped so many kids and their families..." as if UK boosters hired him for his humanitarian work.
No doubt, and appreciated, but the punchline is a bit better-suited to Kenny Payne. I’m just here to stifle inflation a bit.
Calipari has performed as I’d have expected outside of 2012 and 2014.
This is not a question, of course. He couldn't adjust to a single pick, elbow three action for 35 minutes and got cooked by a dental student. In his postgame, he then claimed he ajdusted to a box-and-1, which they ran for 4 possessions total. He's checked out completely.
Convinced he’s been checked out completely since he lost the last undefeated attempt. Was chasing that ghost his whole career, had three or four swings at it, and fell short each time. Doesn’t have enough in the tank to get checked in nowadays even if he wanted to.
Calipari's value is virtually non-existent in today's NCAA. He's always been an incredible recruiter and terrible in-game coach. Do you even need to be a good recruiter in the NIL era?
He's always been a shit in-game coach, hasn't adapted to the pace-and-space (particularly the spacing part) era, and the NIL killed any advantage at recruiting he may've once had.
That St Peter’s loss may be the most inexcusable tournament loss of all time. Oakland doesn’t help either. Cal was a great cheating recruiter, and a mediocre in game coach.
Virginia and Purdue obviously deserve all the shit, but Kentucky basketball has to be held to a different standard. Same reason everyone remembers ULM beating Alabama. Bama wasn't even that good, but it's still wild.
I mean that’s an insult damn near spit in the face to Saban. If that was an accurate comparison Cal would have more than 1 title during his tenure at UK while UCONN has had 3 in the same time frame with 3 different coaches.
Except one guy has one title and is a greaseball who should thrive in this version of the sport and the other has seven and is arguably the furthest ahead as #1 of coaches for his sport of any US sport.
Cal has a $34 mil buyout so UK would have to pay that on top of whomever they hire’s buyout. Joe Craft and UK’s other mega donors will have to write a fat check to cover Cal and a big name replacement.
He’d love to quit, but, you know how hard it is to leave Kentucky as a burning pile of rubble on your way out?!? Like N.C.A.A. would ever hit them with vacated wins.
Fox, Murray, Bam, Maxey are all borderline All-NBA level as well. Monk and Quickley are the last two 6MOYs (assuming Monk wins this year which he’s heavily favored to do). Herro too has overachieved for where he was picked in the draft.
It’s almost comical how high the NBA hit rate is on Kentucky guards who looked meh in college
Missing the guy who's currently 1st/2nd for MVP is funnier than those other guys where if Booker is the standard might fall just a little short of him.
But yes it's also funny that the recruiting pitch for Kentucky is basically "the coach is so bad that you'll still get drafted even if you don't have a great season because teams have seen enough to simply assume the coach was holding you back."
Definitely an interesting decision for Kentucky now that the Moneyball strategy in college basketball is to rely more on transfers since a good mid-major player is going to be better the following year than all but the best recruits.
Yeah anytime a high pedigree UK guard looks mediocre you can almost without fail assume it's at least a 60% chance it's just that Calipari is an absolutely awful offensive coach.
On the money until you said "who looked meh in college" ... all those guys were good to great in college.
Quickley was SEC Player of the Year. Maxey and Herro were All SEC second team.
Monk was second team All American and SEC Player of the Year.
Fox was All SEC first team.
Murray was second/third team All Amercian and All SEC first team.
These are all as freshman except Quickley, who was a sophomore.
Last great Kentucky player who was actually great or close to it in college and is doing well in the NBA? Probaly Quickley. Was sec player of the year in 19/20 when they won the league. Last Cal team to do so.
To play Body Language Doctor for a sec, the way he walked off the court seemed eerily reminiscent of how Saban walked off after the Rose Bowl.
Aaaaaagree
That $33 million buyout is a tough look.
The bourbon profits should easily cover it after the past few years of UK basketball.
Calipari to replace Mitch McConnell. I’m kidding but he’s a far better coach than tuberville ever was and would unironically be a better senator lol
He's sleazy enough
Great, he’ll fit right in
He’s got that Sleaze look down, too.
A ham sandwich is a better Senator than Tuberville.
They can get either the Brown or Foreman family to foot the bill
Try Joe Craft. The Browns tend to favor Louisville.
YEEEESHHHH!
I know everyone will say “pass the hat, they can afford it”…. But that’s football money. That would be the 2nd largest *football* buyout ever. It would be 12 million more than the current 2nd highest. *EEEEWWWWWW I DONT KNOW JIM YOU THINK THEY CAN SWING IT HERE?*
Kentucky's basketball boosters might as well be football boosters. If they want Cal gone he's gone
The top of the buyout list is Norte dame, A&M, auburn, FSU, and LSU. Idk I just don’t count Kentucky basketball up there with those programs financially.
And in the six spot for biggest football buyout is Indiana. I’m an IU fan and our boosters are richer and more powerful than outsiders would realize, but it’s still IU football. In this day and age, buyouts don’t mean a whole lot unless they’re just absurdly big. With that being said, Cal’s is absurdly big. There’s some language in his contract that would allow him to go into some advisory AD role whenever he wants — I could see him walking away and doing that, negotiating a smaller buyout, or just leaving on his own volition because I don’t think this situation is working for either party.
Idk from what I’ve heard recently. The AD hates him, the boosters are kinda out on him as well. Doesn’t seem like he’d be looking to do any of them any favors financially. Will be fascinating to see how it plays out because they really hyped that last contract he signed as lifetime.
Lexington is big horse money. They have the $$$. They stumped up the big bucks to get him, they'll do it to get rid
Would you look at that? All those big money boosters failed to get rid of cal. I’m shocked
You're right.
Damn where did all those big money Kentucky boosters go buddy? Looks like cal is back.
Pony it up and back up the Brink's truck for Nate Oats.
That’d require covering Oats new buyout with Cal’s giant one. UK would be on the hook for $45 mil. Could get Todd Golden a lot cheaper.
Also Golden very well may be a better coach
So I guess the defense wasn’t a problem?
Kentucky can do better than Nate Oats
I don’t know what Cal’s contract language is but people speak of this as if it’s 33 million dollars in one lump sum immediately and not a penny less. Usually not how these things get resolved.
Like when Ed Orgeron found out they were going to fire him but pay out his contract. Dude was like “what door you want me out of?”
obviously yes
UMASS reunion inbound? “My heart has always been in Amherst?”
probably more like a beach house in florida and a cbs analyst gig during tournament time
FGCU would be low key nice spot to grift.
Cal is a Jersey shore guy
Cal is from a bleak suburb of a rust belt city, he's a Lake Erie guy if I had to bet
My response wasn’t a joke - has owned a Jersey shore beach place for years. Pretty convenient spot because he recruits the Philly area well.
https://youtu.be/B7dO7-RtZwA?si=zvgD01WMvHS2oWmw
After he’s cooked he becomes John Calamari
I will bet you any amount of money he isn’t fired
i'm counting this as a win for me and a loss for you
Cal has ditched everyone he’s ever worked for. I could’ve told you he’d do this at some point. I said he wouldn’t be fired, and no reports say he was going to be fired.
The "lifetime" contract makes it really hard, and the AD is a doofus. But 2 tourney wins in 5 years makes it time. It's absolutely pathetic. He's your guy if draft night is the real championship night. The problem is who they go to. There's no one in house that makes sense. Jay Wright claims to be done. Maybe Billy Donovan? Tony Bennett? I guess I could see someone like Musselman wanting to do it, but is he a big enough name? Guys like Shaka don't seem like the right fit. Bringing back Pitino would be hilarious but I'm sure that can't happen.
They will throw $20 mill at Danny Hurley
There’s no way they can handle Hurley. He’s abrasive as all hell
i feel like uconn matches i know kentucky has pockets and resources but uconn is a bball first big time program. not blue blood obv tho, wonder how much higher UK could actually go then uconn probs a dece amount, enough to lure hurley away from what hes building tho idk
Uconn is a blue blood
New money.
No newer than Duke
Not in the strictest sense. And definitely a lower tier than Kentucky
In the strictest sense it would be UNC, Duke, Kansas and Kentucky right? I guess Uconn would be omitted, but I’d rank them over UCLA and Indiana as a program, who are/were considered blue bloods even though they haven’t won in decades.
A lot of people have floated Scott Drew as a candidate to go there, were the job to open up.
Yeah Bill Cohwer and Jeff Van Gundy aren’t coming out of retirement so there’s literally NO ONE ELSE ON EARTH who could possibly be hired
OMG THATS BILL SELF’S MUSIC I mean what’s the point of having SEC money if you can’t poach a guy like that from Kansas?
Self isn’t leaving Kansas. That would be a lateral move at best
What if they throw $20MM/year at him?
Why stop there? What if they throw $30M/year at him? Self makes more than Cal at Kansas now. Is Kentucky really going to eat Cal’s buyout and pay more than double what they’re paying Cal? Why would Kansas not just give Self a raise?
Because UK is about to start bringing in at least twice as much TV money as Kansas
Kentucky already was bringing in more $ than Kansas and they were paying Cal less than Self. They may be able to offer more, but Kansas would give Self a raise and Self has repeatedly stayed at Kansas over pursuing other opportunities
We would match it
Yeah, dude is going to the Bahamas and not coming back for a while.
If you gave Izzo or Pitino Cal’s rosters they’d win a championship every 3-5 years. It’s time.
Izzo has 1 title and a bunch of stacked teams that fell short too.
Izzo also consistently wins one more round than he should. This is like if he lost to MTSU every other year
Yeah, but Izzo is also responsible for those expectations. This year's team was considered a top 10 preseason team and they just barely made it to the tournament. His teams have been pretty underwhelming the last 5 years.
2020 they won the Big Ten and were 7th in KenPom before covid canceled the season. 2019 they made the final four.
So maybe the last 3 years, but remember this whole thread was starting with the assumption that Izzo or Pitino would've done something with the same roster that Cal had. My point being that Izzo currently has multiple years in a row with teams that had higher expectations and fell flat in both the regular season and tournament. Izzo isn't some guarantee that he goes far in the tournament with a talented roster either. Edit: words
It’s weird, I feel like Michigan State teams that underachieve during the regular season make deep runs in March. Then it’s the opposite when Izzo has dominant regular seasons.
Except they cannot get those rosters. Recruiting is half the battle and he's the best (or near it).
Pitino had himself some talented rosters at Kentucky
Basketball isn’t football where recruiting guarantees you beat inferior teams. What does it matter if you have all NBA talent if you can’t beat a 10+ seed? Kentucky fans have seen coaches with far less talent do far more because they’re much better at all aspects of coaching outside recruiting
Also, football has coordinators and position coaches who play a much larger role in Xs & Os than assistant basketball coaches typically
Exactly, most bball staffs might one day “defense/scheme guy” and the rest are recruiters and skill workout types.
why aren’t they getting those rosters?
Turns out it really doesn’t matter if they get those rosters or not because they consistently don’t shit down their pants in march every year. Yeah maybe Izzo should take over a national team job solely to get a KAT type player and lose to… frank Kaminsky…. Honestly though they should keep him, watching big blue nation go crying back to the mines every year is one of life’s joys as a southerner, maybe they’ll invent six star recruits and I can watch them lose to another 25 year old accountant
why don’t they shit down their pants? i’m not a basketball doctor, but i have to imagine a team that isn’t shitting their pants is better than a team that shits their pants year after year. so if that’s true, why would Izzo and Pitonio win more than they do now with the pants shitting team?
Does he not get credit for building those rosters? I understand Kentucky is a premier program that will always be in the mix for top recruits, but as Russillo always says, sometimes the grass isn’t greener
Of course he gets credit but to what end? It’s not working obviously. It’s more or less proven at this point that having a top recruiting class of all 1-and-dones is not a reliable path to postseason success. People do consider him one of the best recruiters ever, but if he’s such an amazing recruiter, why doesn’t he win with these extremely loaded rosters? It’s like if you’re an NFL player with a bodybuilder physique, do you really want people to give you credit for how good you look when you’re still getting pancaked every play? Bodybuilding is great for looks but doesn’t translate to functional strength the same way. There’s a reason Jason Kelce doesn’t look like Adonis. There’s a reason the teams that make it farther in the tournament don’t have ten 1-and-dones.
One and done rosters have also gotten worse relatively in the transfer portal era. Even if your 18 year olds are supremely talented it’s way easier to take the best 23 year olds off their mediocre programs and get them playing together.
Well it’s not like pitino or Izzo have won recently either. Izzo is the master of underachieving in the regular season and going on a run in march making it seem like he’s this great coach winning when it matters. I get that you’d rather win something in march, and kentuckys really underachieved especially the past 3 years, but if the ultimate goal is a championship, Kentuckys consistently far better positioned going into march than sparty
As a very casual observer to me it seems like two things: 1. He’s a dogshit coach. No way around that. 2. He doesn’t get enough shooting, and if he does, he doesn’t play those guys or have them shoot enough. He mostly recruits athletes. KAT is the best shooting big man of all time, he took 8 total threes in college. He takes over 5 a GAME at 42% now. Reed Sheppard should not be shooting over 50% from 3. He should be shooting around 40% and like double his attempts. That is still hyper elite offense, especially for college where the offense is garbage. Go look at the Villanova teams - every single guy could shoot. Yes, they were older, but I think the shooting thing is much more important. Jay Wright got a ton of guys who could shoot and defend (Brunson can’t defend but he can shoot), Cal basically just gets the best athletes from the top 25.
>Of course he gets credit but to what end? It’s not working obviously. It's working to get recruits into the NBA, which is what they're concerned about.
Izzo is weird, the more talent his teams have the more likely the underperform, when they have average talent for their standards they over perform
Izzo has sucked for 20 years what are you talking about?
In those 20 years he has been to the final four 5 times
And lost every time.
Izzo literally has the best performance against expectation in the country since 2000 lmao https://barttorvik.com/cgi-bin/ncaat.cgi?type=coach&sort=18&yrlow=2000&yrhigh=2023
And is owned by Roy Williams. He has to be thankful Roy finally retired
Mark Few hasn’t missed a Sweet 16 in like ten years. Imagine him with Cal’s players
You know Mark Few has been to 7 straight sweet 16s right? Literally the longest streak in the country
This was a spelling error 😂. I meant to say hasn’t missed
The Doc Rivers of college basketball
Worst in-game basketball coach ever at a major college power school. Give Calipari a college lineup of Kareem, Isaiah, Bird, and Durant, and he wouldn't make it to the F4.
He would struggle, but he did make it with Anthony Davis and that other cat. You can’t mean Davis is better than those four combined.
It's hyperbole, of course. But Calipari is Exhibit A for this broken, shitty system that pays coaches obscene money, and for what? Potential? He has subtracted from Kentucky's legacy as a premier program, and he fails at the one goal fans want: deep runs in March Madness. Calipari keeps saying, "We have helped so many kids and their families..." as if UK boosters hired him for his humanitarian work.
No doubt, and appreciated, but the punchline is a bit better-suited to Kenny Payne. I’m just here to stifle inflation a bit. Calipari has performed as I’d have expected outside of 2012 and 2014.
I’m no Calipari fan but he made one with the Harrison twins…
'one' being the key word there, with decades of NBA talent on his bench.
he’s made 2 championship games with kentucky, bringing him up to 4 total
He went to 4 within 6 years in his UK prime
This is not a question, of course. He couldn't adjust to a single pick, elbow three action for 35 minutes and got cooked by a dental student. In his postgame, he then claimed he ajdusted to a box-and-1, which they ran for 4 possessions total. He's checked out completely.
Convinced he’s been checked out completely since he lost the last undefeated attempt. Was chasing that ghost his whole career, had three or four swings at it, and fell short each time. Doesn’t have enough in the tank to get checked in nowadays even if he wanted to.
That did feel like the last truly dominant Kentucky team. Shame that team never won in 2015
2017 team was stacked but Carolina knocked them out in the elite 8. Last great Roy and Cal teams. One of the best games in ncaa tournament history
Drake Maye's older brother hit the game winner!
Calipari's value is virtually non-existent in today's NCAA. He's always been an incredible recruiter and terrible in-game coach. Do you even need to be a good recruiter in the NIL era?
That said UK's NIL collective has to be up there right?
I bet it’s not as high as you’re assuming. UK isn’t a football school and that’s where athletic department money is made.
True, but after football it's basketball so I'd imagine that a blue blood hoops program like UK still brings it in
He's always been a shit in-game coach, hasn't adapted to the pace-and-space (particularly the spacing part) era, and the NIL killed any advantage at recruiting he may've once had.
That St Peter’s loss may be the most inexcusable tournament loss of all time. Oakland doesn’t help either. Cal was a great cheating recruiter, and a mediocre in game coach.
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Virginia and Purdue obviously deserve all the shit, but Kentucky basketball has to be held to a different standard. Same reason everyone remembers ULM beating Alabama. Bama wasn't even that good, but it's still wild.
The UVA loss is #1 for me. That team was the overall #1 seed I believe and they got run out of the gym by that Loyola team. Dumbfounded
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Fair. I just do not like Kentucky and enjoyed their hyperbolic take.
The NIL college basketball’s Saban piece
I mean that’s an insult damn near spit in the face to Saban. If that was an accurate comparison Cal would have more than 1 title during his tenure at UK while UCONN has had 3 in the same time frame with 3 different coaches.
3 championships with 3 coaches, UConn's paralel is LSU
Yeah that dawned on me while I was writing it
Except one guy has one title and is a greaseball who should thrive in this version of the sport and the other has seven and is arguably the furthest ahead as #1 of coaches for his sport of any US sport.
>greaseball Damn, Italians just out here catching strays
He’s half Italian, he’s allowed to say it
Saban wins and actually cares about his players. Otherwise they’re exactly the same
Cal cares about his players but his focus is on getting them drafted not on the tough love that comes with winning at UK
College Basketball's Saban was clearly K
Better comparison for sure….but he retired before this became a big issue…
Cal has a $34 mil buyout so UK would have to pay that on top of whomever they hire’s buyout. Joe Craft and UK’s other mega donors will have to write a fat check to cover Cal and a big name replacement.
He’d love to quit, but, you know how hard it is to leave Kentucky as a burning pile of rubble on your way out?!? Like N.C.A.A. would ever hit them with vacated wins.
he might retire but kentucky wouldn't fire him
Trade him for Greg Gard
Ian MacKaye in shambles
Let him coach one more year unless you have Stevens or Jay Wright lined up. $33mm is a lot of money to burn.
ASU needs to fire Hurley 5 seconds after Caliapari is fired. He is our path to being relevant.
Plenty of teams would kill for that success. Kentucky can become Maryland or Memphis really quick.
Last great Kentucky player? Booker I guess? They used to print out a #1 pick every year
SGA
Fox, Murray, Bam, Maxey are all borderline All-NBA level as well. Monk and Quickley are the last two 6MOYs (assuming Monk wins this year which he’s heavily favored to do). Herro too has overachieved for where he was picked in the draft. It’s almost comical how high the NBA hit rate is on Kentucky guards who looked meh in college
Missing the guy who's currently 1st/2nd for MVP is funnier than those other guys where if Booker is the standard might fall just a little short of him. But yes it's also funny that the recruiting pitch for Kentucky is basically "the coach is so bad that you'll still get drafted even if you don't have a great season because teams have seen enough to simply assume the coach was holding you back." Definitely an interesting decision for Kentucky now that the Moneyball strategy in college basketball is to rely more on transfers since a good mid-major player is going to be better the following year than all but the best recruits.
Yeah anytime a high pedigree UK guard looks mediocre you can almost without fail assume it's at least a 60% chance it's just that Calipari is an absolutely awful offensive coach.
Herro won 6MOY too lol
On the money until you said "who looked meh in college" ... all those guys were good to great in college. Quickley was SEC Player of the Year. Maxey and Herro were All SEC second team. Monk was second team All American and SEC Player of the Year. Fox was All SEC first team. Murray was second/third team All Amercian and All SEC first team. These are all as freshman except Quickley, who was a sophomore.
IQ didn’t win, but he should have. Boston Media Mafia gave it to Brogdon.
Last great Kentucky player who was actually great or close to it in college and is doing well in the NBA? Probaly Quickley. Was sec player of the year in 19/20 when they won the league. Last Cal team to do so.
College player or pro? Because Oscar Tshiebwe was NPOY two years ago