As was the case with many of its predecessors, the 2024 Champions Classic will feature no shortage of storylines.
Kansas, the preseason No. 1 team in the USA TODAY Sports Coaches Poll, will be competing in the event. Duke, led by freshman phenom Cooper Flagg and a top-ranked 2024 recruiting class, will be playing its first big game of the season. Michigan State, early in hits 30th season under Tom Izzo, will be there, as well.
Then there’s Kentucky.
What might be college basketball’s most accomplished program historically will be one of the most fascinating to follow during the 2024-25 season. The Wildcats will not only feature an entirely remade roster, but they’ll be led by a new coach.
Over the offseason, Mark Pope left BYU to take over at his alma mater, where he played on Kentucky’s famed 1996 national championship team, considered by many to be one of the best squads in the sport’s history.
So where does that leave John Calipari, the man who coached the Wildcats from 2009-24? Here’s what you need to know about Calipari and where he is now:
Where is John Calipari?
For 15 years, Calipari was the face of Kentucky basketball.
Over that time, he rebuilt and remade the Wildcats. After taking over a program that underachieved in its final seasons under Tubby Smith and during Billy Gillispie’s ill-fated two-year run, Calipari led Kentucky to the Final Four in four of his first six seasons, a run highlighted by a national title in 2012, the program’s first in 14 years.
Along the way, he helped reinvent not only the identity of Kentucky, but the sport as a whole, turning over his roster annually and restocking it with a parade of top-ranked recruiting classes filled with players like John Wall, Anthony Davis, DeMarcus Cousins and Devin Booker who would spend one season at the school before departing for the NBA, where many of them were top draft picks.
In what felt like an instant, though, he was gone.
Back in April, Calipari left the Wildcats to become the new head coach at Arkansas in one of the more stunning moves of the 2024 coaching carousel.
He didn’t make the move to Fayetteville alone. Calipari brought a handful of Kentucky’s top returning players with him, like guard D.J. Wagner, forward Adou Thiero and big man Zvonimir Ivišić, along with prized recruits like Boogie Fland, Karter Knox and Billy Richmond III, all of whom had previously committed to Kentucky before Calipari left.
A once-unthinkable move within the SEC was made possible by a confluence of factors.
For all he had achieved at Kentucky, Calipari’s teams were producing diminishing returns later in his tenure. Though it got close on multiple occasions, the Wildcats never made it back to the Final Four under Calipari after 2015, when what had been an undefeated team was stunned by Wisconsin in the national semifinals.
In recent years, those woes mounted. During the pandemic-altered 2020-21 season, Kentucky went just 9-16, its worst win percentage in a season since 1926-27. Though they rebounded to make the NCAA tournament each of the past three seasons, including twice as a top-three seed, they won just one postseason game during that stretch and never advanced past the first weekend of the tournament. Those struggles were exemplified by a pair of stunning first-round exits, with Kentucky falling as a No. 2 seed to Saint Peter’s in 2022 and as a No. 3 seed to Oakland in 2024. Those upsets raised questions not only about Calipari’s one-and-done system, which pitted freshman-heavy rosters against older, more experienced squads in the postseason, but Calipari himself. Was he still the right man for such a demanding gig with justifiably high expectations?
As frustration boiled among Kentucky fans after the loss to Oakland, Calipari met with athletic director Mitch Barnhart at the end of the season, after which Barnhart announced Calipari would be back for a 16th season. At that point, it appeared as though a tenuous, reportedly unhappy marriage was set to continue.
Then, a viable alternative emerged for Calipari.
After Eric Musselman left for USC, Arkansas was in need of a new basketball coach and eventually turned its gaze to Calipari. The Wildcats’ coach was interested. The Razorbacks have an accomplished history, including a national championship in 1994, and a passionate fan base that routinely packs Bud Walton Arena. Calipari had a personal connection to the school, as well, as he is longtime friends with Arkansas mega-booster John Tyson, the CEO of Tyson Foods.
Following discussions, a deal was struck, with Calipari signing a five-year contract that starts with a scheduled value of $38 million.
“This is a dream job,” Calipari said in a video to Kentucky fans he released after it was revealed he had accepted the Arkansas job. “It was my dream job. Anybody in our profession looks at the University of Kentucky in basketball and says, ‘That is the bluest of blue.’ The last few weeks, we’ve come to realize that this program probably needs to hear another voice. And the fans need to hear another voice. We’ve loved it here, but we think it’s time for us to step away — and step away completely from the program.”
Though Calipari didn’t inherit much of anything after getting to Arkansas – at his introductory news conference, he famously said “I met with the team. There is no team.” – he brought over parts of his Kentucky roster, much of what would have been the Wildcats’ 2024 recruiting class and some high-profile transfers like Florida Atlantic’s Johnell Davis and Tennessee’s Jonas Aidoo to piece together a squad that entered the season No. 16 in the Coaches Poll.
John Calipari record
Calipari went 410-123 over his 15 seasons at Kentucky.
For his career — which included stops at UMass and Memphis before Kentucky and Arkansas — he has an overall record of 856-264. Along with Rick Pitino, he’s one of only two Division I coaches to ever lead three different programs to the Final Four.
John Calipari age
Calipari is 65 years old and will turn 66 in February.
