What John Calipari did for Kentucky will eventually be appreciated … just not now

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The debate in Kentucky this week is how Wildcat basketball fans should greet their former coach, John Calipari, when he returns to Rupp Arena Saturday as the leader of the Arkansas Razorbacks.

Cheer? Boo? Just do nothing?

The answer is whatever the heck they want, of course. It’s a basketball game. Part of the fun of being a fan is reacting (or overreacting) in every imaginable way, good or bad. Calipari is 65 years old and long ago proved he gives as good as he takes. He’ll survive.

“My guess is I’m going to get booed,” Calipari said this week. “But that’s all part of it. Shoot, you get booed. I’ve done this so long, I’ll tell ya, I’ve got bazooka holes in my body. So when you shoot arrows, it doesn’t even hit skin.”

Gallows humor as a deflection tactic seems appropriate because as battle-tested as Calipari is walking into enemy arenas that despise him, this is not one he is looking forward to experiencing.

For 15 years — or at least all but the final couple when success started to be tempered, especially in March — Rupp was Calipari’s castle and Kentuclky was his Camelot.

Now he’ll return, likely wearing a red Arkansas sport coat — an outward symbol of where he is now that he never embraced at his previous stops (i.e. he didn’t always wear Kentucky blue).

Kentucky fans are free to view Calipari how they wish. There is little debate that the program had gotten stale at the end of his time there. Cal likely did everyone a favor by opting out of essentially a lifetime contract and leaving for Arkansas last spring. Still, he left and for a SEC rival no less. He also took many of his players, recruits and staff with him.

It isn’t like UK fans would be jeering some retired old coach. One day Cal will get his flowers. When Rick Pitino finally returned for Midnight Madness last year as a guest of new coach Mark Pope, he was cheered. There was no such love when he was leading Louisville.

What isn’t a debate, though, is what Calipari did do for the…

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Source link : https://sports.yahoo.com/what-john-calipari-did-for-kentucky-will-eventually-be-appreciated–just-not-now-174848023.html

Author : Yahoo Sports

Publish date : 2025-01-31 17:48:00

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