John Calipari Will Return For A 16th Season At Kentucky

After Kentucky’s latest early exit in March Madness last week, John Calipari’s future was somewhat in doubt.

But after Calipari met Tuesday with athletic director Mitch Barnhart, Barnhart announced the Naismith Hall of Fame coach would return for a 16th season in Lexington

Calipari’s buyout at Kentucky is more than $33 million, so the school would have had to write a major check to move on from him.

In 2019, after leading the Wildcats to the Elite Eight, Calipari signed a lifetime contract valued at $86 million over the course of the deal. That came after Calipari said he had spoken with UCLA and also talked to NBA teams all the time.

Since then the 65-year-old Calipari has won a single NCAA Tournament game, and has lost four of his last five, including last week’s stunning upset to No. 14 Oakland.

In the span of three years, his teams have lost to a No. 15 seed (Saint Peter’s) and a 14 (Oakland). Kentucky became the fourth team since the tournament expanded to 64 teams in 1985 to lose to a 14 seed or lower in the first round twice in a 3-year span. Kentucky was 19-0 in those games prior to this span.

Even before this recent spate of early losses, many criticized Calipari for only winning one NCAA title despite all the talent he has brought in year after year.

It should be pointed out that on Calipari’s watch at Kentucky, the program has been to four Final Fours, won six SEC regular-season titles and six SEC tournament titles.

This latest loss came despite his team featuring five freshmen ranked inside the ESPN 100 recruiting rankings. Freshmen guards Rob Dillingham and Reed Sheppard are projected Top-5 picks in the NBA Draft and fifth-year guard Antonio Reeves was an All-SEC selection who averaged more than 20 points per game.

“The era of taking these young freshmen and trying to play against older players is over,” said Jay Wright, who won two national titles and reached four Final Fours at Villanova. “I think [Calipari] did a phenomenal job with these guys all year, getting them to be as successful as they were. You can see they’re playing against grown men.

“The guys on Kentucky will be far better pros than any of these guys on Oakland or any of these guys in the tournament. But they’re not as good college basketball players. At this point in their career, they’re not as disciplined.”

Kentucky’s latest loss led Calipari to openly wonder if he would revisit his recruiting strategy, which often has relied on one-and-done five-star freshmen.

“I’ve done this with young teams my whole career,” Calipari said in the wake of his fourth NCAA Tournament loss in his last five games. “Going to be hard for me to change that because we’ve helped so many young people and their families. I don’t see myself saying we’re not going to recruit freshmen.”

Calipari has yet another blockbuster recruiting class coming in for 2024, including Camden shooting guard Billy Richmond and Archbishop Stepinac (N.Y.) point guard Boogie Fland.

“We’ve got an unbelievable group coming in,” Calipari told reporters in the wake of his latest March loss.

ESPN’s Jay Bilas said the latest loss had less to do with the age of Kentucky’s players than the fact that they simply couldn’t stop Goehlke and Oakland on the perimeter.

“It’s not the age of the players that’s the issue because he did have older players on the floor,” Bilas said Friday on ESPN, pointing to veterans Reeves and Tre Mitchell and

“This is about not guarding the 3-point line. They gave up 15 3’s and whether you’re 18 or 36, if you give up 15 3’s you’re putting yourself in a position to lose. And I get what Cal is saying.”

“But he’s going to continue to recruit the best talent whether they’re 18, 19, 24, 27, it doesn’t matter.”

As long as he remains the head coach, that approach isn’t likely to change much.

But the spotlight will continue to shine on Calipari next season.