Calipari to Arkansas?!?
 

WTF

What a win for Klantucky

That's pretty funny, actually

Shit. UK suddenly has a chance to be a top program again.

Running off a coach who is the amongst the highest paid in his profession for a worse job to make less money is pretty crazy.

What a bizarre move. I guess he couldn't handle the pressure of being a non-factor over the past few years.

Well for some reason he started coaching like Fran McCaffrey this year. All offense. No defense. It was baffling.

Any one of Scott Drew, Matt Painter, or Nate Oats would be a significant upgrade on Cal at this point. Hell, maybe even Bruce Pearl. And you’d have to think they will get one of them.

UK couldn’t be any luckier here that he’s bolted.

Don't see a reason it isn't Nate Oats.

Is Cal gonna end the gay thing they had going down there this year? Heard they had some internal issues with some gay love triangle among teammates

He has an $18 million buyout.

Wouldn't even be a story if you transposed UK's track record under Calipari to somewhere like Washington State.

If anything, it would look like Arkansas went out of their way for a retread.

My condolences

Lol **** Arkansas. Got a guy that's completely in over his head in this new atmosphere. If he couldn't win at ****ing Kentucky with the changes, then he sure as shit isn't winning at Arkansas.

He won at Memphis and UMass.

Edit:

Nm you meant in the NIL era

Arkansas with that Walmart and Tyson Chicken NIL $$$.

NIL neutered the "blue bloods" a bit so it's funny as ****. That paying the players under the table through the shoe companies and bag men gap has been closed. T shirt fans all over Kentucky weep.

What top coach wants to deal with that insane program?

Kentucky wandered the wilderness for a while before Cal arrived.

<blockquote class="twitter-tweet"><p lang="en" dir="ltr">Purdue coach Matt Painter with a bomb here at his NCAA title game news conference:<br><br>“Name, image, and likeness wasn’t put into place so the schools with the most money could get the best players. But if you want to be honest, that was happening before.”<br><br>🤯</p>&mdash; Gregg Doyel (@GreggDoyelStar) <a href="https://twitter.com/GreggDoyelStar/status/1777047013064139030?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">April 7, 2024</a></blockquote> <script async src="https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js" charset="utf-8"></script>

By wilderness, do you mean 2 years?

LOL WUT

This is a wild world we live in.

My guess is he was "encouraged to seek a new opportunity" or some shit.

Yup and even the ones that were caught barely got a slap on the wrist and it was swept under the rug. Fans of that other k team that always got mad Cal "cheated" shut up quickly when their hands got caught in the cookie jar

^^^

Always got KU on his mind

LMAO

Lol his inferiority complex definitely shines through when it comes to KU. Literally every team and school was doing something for recruits and players.

Nothing I posted is untrue ROFL Bawled your eyes out for years about Cal "buying players"...until "shoe gate" happened

Now a little Devil's advocate, watch Cal & Arkansas start whipping UK regularly and advancing farther in the big dance! :hmmm:

That would be AWESOME!

I'd say it's like a Broncos fan thinking they can hurt Chiefs fans feelings, but the Broncos won a division game last year, so... :shrug:

Heard that Arkansas's going to have $5 mil in NIL funds available. He's probably going to bring his entire recruiting class with him and Kentucky's going to have a brutal team next season.

It's going to be hilarious when Arkansas smokes Kentucky next year.

Do you really think Kentucky won’t use the portal with whatever new hire they bring in and won’t be able to lure other recruits to de-commit from wherever they initially were committed to?

Come on now.

Beginning your roster construction in April (or later) isn't exactly ideal.

Of course they'll end up with some decent players, but you just lost by far your best recruiter in many years, so I wouldn't expect a wealth of talent to fall into your lap as it has the last 15 years.

No shit. But I don’t expect the team to have talent equivalent to DePaul either.

Chances are most of, if not all, his commits follow him to Arkansas and any player who was going to stay will transfer. Yeah, way less than ideal to build an entire roster in April,but so what?

Yes, ideally the next coach would make it to the second weekend or better year 1 (expecting a F4 or natty is insane), but it’s not about Year 1. It’s about Year 2 and the future.

I’m not sure Cal could make the F4 at Kentucky again given he pissed off a majority of the fanbase and the boosters along the way. I think it’s possible he could at Arkansas where he won’t face as much scrutiny.

Did Kentucky reduce the buyout for him to go to Arkansas? I was hearing that they were giving him one more chance next year because the buyout on his contract would drop significantly.

No. It would cost UK $33 million to fire him. It costs Cal nothing to leave on his own.

Arkansas? LOL

Squeal like a pig, Cal!

I think it's the opposite actually. Big name schools were always playing players. Now it's even EASIER. There is really no excuse to ever have a down year now because you can just reload in the portal. The blue bloods of the world can go out and get whoever they want. We paid HD like 1.5M this year.

Do you think there was some behind the scene buy out? Cal goes to them and says look I'll leave but I want you to pay me 8 million of it and I'll take the Arky job so you can save some money.

Rams Fan lost

Google it. It's real. At least the speculation about it is.

No, as it’s for an in-conference school.

Now, if he went to a place like Ohio St. or USC, where he’d be making significantly less than what he will at Arkansas (which is a bit below his UK salary), I could see where the powers that be give him some $ on the way out. But he was never getting fired or leave without collecting the majority of $ he was owed. He took a slight paycut to go to Arkansas, but not substantial.

More shocked he left to stay in the SEC after having his AD publicly back him, with both doing a sit down interview together in Lexington, last week.

I know we are talking about UK, they have had some down years, coaches before, so think of this tidbit. Anywhere Cal has been and left, UMass, Memphis, the programs never became/regain relevance again. A 3rd time charm would be a setting most CBB fans around the world would cherish!

Just saying ..... :hmmm:

You’re comparing a state school that had no success before Calipari and a mid-major to a Blue Blood.

You realize we got in trouble for giving De Sousa money for an online class so he could become eligible. It wasn't the Adidas thing.

ROFL ROFL ROFL

UConn is what you think the beakers are?

I am almost 40. Kansas has never been bad in my entire life. Never, ever, ever. Maybe in 1989 when they were on probation but I was too young to remember it. No team has a run of greatness like that where they've never been bad. Not Duke. Not UNC. Not UK and definitely not UConn.

In your lifetime, sure.

My Dad was at Kansas in the early 70s. They had 2 seasons at or below .500.

Well, time to turn in our tshirts.


<iframe src="https://giphy.com/embed/OTrcaFr7P5RIs" width="480" height="314" frameBorder="0" class="giphy-embed" allowFullScreen></iframe>

News at 11: No team has 100 consecutive seasons with winning records.

I said I know it's UK, BTA I also said it's Cal and ....... ? :doh!:

It was put in place because people thought student athletes were no better than galley slaves.

This was the natural outcome of NIL. Anyone with a brain knew it.

and you're a simpleton if you think only a handful of schools did it/do it.

Never said that but there were posters here that thought Cal did things that Burrito did not until he was caught grabbing Xtra queso

Maybe you guys should have tried cheating?

We're all super jealous of Calipari's one NC to KU's two during his time at UK. :spock:

Didn’t realize they gave out a banner for 2020.

Only collectible wine bottles.

By "brutal," I didn't mean Depaul brutal (even though Calipari somehow managed to pull that off a few years ago). Keep in mind, many of your fans consider the last five years rock bottom. It can get a loooot worse than extremely talented teams choking in the tourney.

After the last five years, I doubt that fans are going to be patient with a really mediocre, NIT type season next year. Especially if they have to settle for someone who isn't one of their top choices.

Only Ken pom connection and Lil Willie are pathetic enough to claim that

If we're being technical, Adidas was caught with their hand in the cookie jar. Sworn testimony said that Bill knew nothing about it.

Don't get me wrong...I don't have my head buried. But if people are going to hide behind the "facts," then they have to stick to the facts. No one's proven a thing about Self's role in that stuff.

I don’t disagree, but the chances of Kentucky being atrociously awful for a sustainable period of time, while possible, is unlikely. There’s too much of a support system and infrastructure to be bad (I’m talking actual bad. Like 2020-2021 bad) a long time.

Sure, there might be a few years where it’s bad (like Doherty at UNC), but not an entire decade plus of darkness.

It's a thread about a Kentucky coach going to Arkansas where a Missouri fan is scraping the bottom of the barrel trying to troll Kansas fans... in terms of facts, we're like 5 head first dives into folding tables beyond saying Josh Allen is superior to Mahomes.

Good move for Cal. He's no longer able to compete in this era where he can't just get by on one and dones. He can now go to Arkansas where standards are far lower than UK.

The fan base is definitely strong. Good history recently in EM’s early years. Let’s see what JC can bring with him. Razorback basketball can compete in the SEC, will be a good fit.

No doubts. He just won't have a championship every year standard to live up to.

The last 5 years have been pretty awful by UK standards. How likely would you have thought those results would be 6 years ago?

Pretty wild. I guess he was at Memphis before so sort of in the area.

https://x.com/gmannvols/status/17774...jn8lyJwT7tGMSQ

Cant embed on my phone but there’s rumors he’s trying to stay.

Let’s go.

Amazing. We can't let UK have any chance of being a powerhouse program again. Scott Drew or Nate Oats could do that.

It cost him nothing to quite, but if he is going to coach next year that team normally has to pay the same $33 million dollar buyout to the school he is leaving.

Arkansas basketball fans are 90% as delusional as Sucky fans with like 10% of the success.

They are going to have unreasonable expectations as well.

Calipari is a good coach.

That would be a hell of a buzzkill.

The meltdown on Rupp Rafters would be amazing.

They're having a 'Goodbye CCC' party over there.

Was a good coach. Now he's just a good recruiter.

Shades of Dana Altman. LMAO

<blockquote class="twitter-tweet"><p lang="en" dir="ltr">A message to <a href="https://twitter.com/hashtag/BBN?src=hash&amp;ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">#BBN</a>: <a href="https://t.co/TG344ipTfZ">pic.twitter.com/TG344ipTfZ</a></p>&mdash; John Calipari (@UKCoachCalipari) <a href="https://twitter.com/UKCoachCalipari/status/1777761913964843518?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">April 9, 2024</a></blockquote> <script async src="https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js" charset="utf-8"></script>

Damn. UK is (potentially) back.

I wanted Cal to go out on a higher note as a final **** you to everyone, but it was time.

He did a lot of good stuff. But if he came back next year it would toxic as hell.

Now, as long as Barnhart doesn’t hire Gillispie 2.0, we can move forward.

Correct me if I'm wrong..... but he's the one that said he was leaving (or at least that was the thought); and UK can't fire him without a huge payout. So couldn't he, in theory, just say "I'm staying" and that's the end of it?

Damnit!