John Calipari and the Hall of Fame

By LARRY VAUGHT

INDIANAPOLIS — Wisconsin coach Bo Ryan and Kentucky coach John Calipari have been friends for a long time and both have Pennsylvania roots.

That’s why Ryan had no trouble explaining what he respects most about Calipari.

“Because he's like me, he tells it like it is. If he sees something... Yeah, he's real,” said Ryan at the Final Four before his team stunned No. 1 UK 71-64 Saturday. “I don't know how else to put it. You know, he's real.

“I don't know if John is trying to use any other agendas to get me. He just does his things the way he feels are right. He really doesn't care what other people say, if he feels he's doing the right thing. I'm the same way.”

Calipari officially finds out Monday morning if he has been elected to the Naismith Memorial Basketball Hall of Fame, but various media sources starting with ESPN reported Sunday that he had received the necessary votes for induction while Ryan fell short.

Calipari, 56, has been to the Final Four six times, including four times in the last five years at UK, something only two other coaches have ever done. Calipari won a national championship in 2012 at Kentucky.

This year his team was 38-0 before it lost to Wisconsin. He’s won several coach of the year awards, including the Naismith Coach of the Yera Sunday. He was named Southeastern Conference Coach of the Year for the second time in his career earlier this season. He was also Sporting News, Associated Press and the National Association of Basketball Coaches’ National Coach of the Year.

He’s 190-38 in six years at UK, an 83 percent winning mark. Overall in his coaching career, he’s 593-175, a 77 percent mark. He also coached three years in the NBA.

His players certainly were on board with him being elected.

“Calipari has to be a Hall of Famer. He should definitely get it Monday. He is a great coach and has many wins, many Final Fours,” Booker said Friday. “The things he can do with freshmen, the one-and-done and then bring in another whole group and have them ready is unbelievable for a coach to do.

“He makes sure nothing gets in the way of what we are doing, and that’s what you need on a team like this. He makes sure we don’t hear any of the outside stuff. He has our back all the time.”

Freshman Tyler Ulis said there’s no doubt his coach belongs in the Hall of Fame.

“With his resume in general and then he got us all to play together as a team, you have eight or nine All-Americans and he got us all to respect each other’s game,” Ulis said. “We don’t need to be about ourselves to play good. We just have to be about the team. He taught us that.”

Still, Calipari remains a polarizing figure in college basketball. Final Four berths at Massachusetts and Memphis were stripped by the NCAA even though he was accused of no wrongdoing.

“I don't know if I am as much as you want to portray it. Maybe I am. It's not that I'm trying to be. Here's my focus. I'm not focused on changing people's minds who don't know me, their opinion of me. I'm doing my job for these kids,” Calipari said at the Final Four. “If you like that, I'm happy. If you don't like that or don't like that kid, that's your problem, not mine.

“I'm not doing this to please everybody. I'm doing this to please these young people and their families. That's my mission. Now, as that plays out in the next 50 years, maybe I was wrong doing it this way, being about players first. Maybe I'm not wrong about doing this. We start moving in a direction to do more for these kids, help them.

“Kentucky's program will be right here where I'm sitting 50 years from now. What we do for these kids change their whole lives and a direction, and that's how I look at this.”

He says winning a coach of the year award doesn’t change him or who he is.

“I'm the same guy I've always been. Well, not really. A lot of things change as you get older. My heart's the same. My friends are the same. My approach to things are the same. Hopefully I've matured and grown up a little bit. That's questionable also, I hear,” he said. “But, look, I always say this. The reason I'm not worried about now and how I'm evaluated, legacy, it doesn't matter.

“Fifty years from now when we're all gone, people will look back without emotion and say, ‘What has he done? What did he do for people? What did he do for the universities?’ Not just me, but all coaches. Your legacy is how did he benefit these people, these families? Did they benefit by that connection? Doesn't matter what I say now. Fifty years from now people will look back and either like what we did or not.”