You probably weren’t expecting a “John Calipari needs a contract extension” take after just two years into his ten-year deal, but I feel a certain duty to save Kentucky Nation from themselves as a sizable “Fire Calipari” crowd spawned from a hurtful opening round NCAA tournament loss to 15-seed Saint Peter’s. Look guys, I get it, Kentucky is basically the only professionally paid sports team you have in your state now that Rick Pitino left Louisville, so when they screw up, the emotions are magnified. But the reality is that you should be hoping for a contract extension instead of the ax. The last thing you need is John nearing in on a lame duck season and falling right back into “maybe this time the NBA will work out” mode like he did at Massachusetts in the late 90s. Allow me to explain to your hurting fanbase how good you have it and why you should feel damn lucky to have one of the college ball coaching GOATs.
First things first. You might say Kentucky’s 9-16 record in 2020 was not acceptable, but keep in mind Calipari lost four starters from the prior year to the NBA and faced the hardest strength of schedule in the SEC (11th hardest in the nation). So forgive him for going through a rebuild that took less time to complete than Mike Krzyzewski’s retirement proceedings. Back at it with 26 wins in 2021, Calipari earned a 2-seed in the tournament that just so happened to crash course with a Cinderella miracle team. But it’s easy to let the opening round bouncing cloud how good Kentucky was in 2021. For starters, they were the fastest SEC team on average to score 10 points which tells you coach Cal got the boys running out of the gates. They were so well coached they never called timeout on the road in the first 15 minutes of any regular season game. Coach Cal was all business and prepared his men accordingly. And before you go about naysaying he was too busy counting his money to call a timeout, know that when Calipari did call a timeout he made it count. Kentucky held the highest win percentage in the SEC in games where they called a timeout while trailing:
What more can you ask of a coach than to prepare the squad and, when needed, pounce in critical timeout situations to steer the ship back on course? I’ll tell you what: year-over-year domination. You’d be hard-pressed to find anyone more proven than Calipari. There have been over 25,000 men’s college basketball team seasons since 1894. Calipari’s 2011 season with Kentucky tied two other teams for the most wins (38) of any team ever. This elite company includes two other coaching GOATs including John Calipari (2007) and John Calipari (2014). But sure, go off with your “Fire Calipari” chirps. These three seasons weren’t random flashes in the pan either. With 30 seasons of NCAA coaching experience, John Calipari has a better win percentage than any of the 14 total coaches with 40 plus years’ of experience aside from Kentucky’s very own Adolph (the good one) Rupp:
Calipari hasn’t just dominated the old timers club either. Since taking over Kentucky in 2009, he leads the SEC in win percentage by a large margin:
Finally, let’s talk about how many wins the NCAA has stolen from John Calipari in the form of “vacated” games. John is currently the 9th most penalized coach in NCAA history in terms of wins stolen by the NCAA for petty technicalities such as the program’s investment in Marcus Camby’s personal growth program (hookers). Respect to state of Kentucky’s very own Rick Pitino, the GOAT of stolen wins by the NCAA (123) for similar petty infractions including hiring an assistant coach who implemented specific team building exercises to bring the team together outside of practice (hookers).
Shout out to the guys at the bottom of this list like Bob Delle Bovi (awesome name) for getting caught doing a bad but not giving the NCAA the satisfaction of having any wins available to be taken even after cheating. As a Blackjack card counter, this could not be more relatable. And a tip of the cap to B.J. Hill for a good effort in trying to have more games coached vacated than legit. He came up a little short, but a 41 percent vacate-rate (VR) is on a level of its own in advanced analytics.
So let’s chill Kentucky Nation. Take the NCAA offseason to reflect on the positive. I mean, you certainly don’t have another sports team to turn your attention to so may as well go all in on John Calipari and hope they lock him in for another ten or twenty years. Don’t let one down year and a fluke tournament loss ruin a good thing. Think big picture. If nothing else, give Calipari a fair chance to catch Pitino on the all time vacated wins list. That’d be worth an award presentation in and of itself. Rick could have the honors of calling John up to the podium and give some sly joke like “least the record stays in Kentucky”, and they could even invite Derrick Rose to stand by John’s side in acceptance. And, if available, maybe even Marcus Camby’s hookers.
