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Kentucky’s John Calipari is enjoying ride into Final Four

Kentucky Coach John Calipari has become synonymous with one-and-done freshmen and become one of the most polarizing figures in college basketball.
(Charles Bertram / McClatchy-Tribune)
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John Calipari waited until he heard the question and quickly set the record straight when asked about his abilities as a recruiter.

“Wait a minute. Wait a minute,” the Kentucky coach said. “When I was at UMass, we had one McDonald’s All-American, Donta Bright. When I was at Memphis, we may have had three over my years there. We weren’t getting top-50 players at UMass. We were winning. We were a terrific team. I had to coach guys four years.”

This is not the first time in this tournament, or over the years at Kentucky, that Calipari has pointed out he has built programs differently and won.

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But the Calipari everyone knows at Kentucky has become synonymous with one-and-done freshmen, five-star recruits who bolt to the NBA after one season.

After winning the NCAA tournament in 2012 with a cast of freshmen led by Anthony Davis and appearing in the Final Four this season with five starting freshmen, it’s hard to argue the current method doesn’t work.

When No. 8-seeded Kentucky meets No. 2-seeded Wisconsin in a semifinal game Saturday in Arlington, Texas, it will be the third time in four seasons that the Wildcats have reached the Final Four.

Yet, there may not be a more polarizing coach in college basketball since Bob Knight at Indiana.

And Calipari knows he is a lightning rod.

Calipari said he tells recruits, “Every game is the Super Bowl. You’re scrutinized because people are attacking me, so you’re going to get scrutinized because they want to come after me. What we’re doing has never been done. You can’t do this. So you’re getting that hit. If you can’t deal with all that, don’t come here.”

Then he said, “That’s a heck of a sale, isn’t it?”

His two vacated Final Four appearances at Massachusetts and Memphis leave a stain on his resume and his one-and-done recruiting bristles some.

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This season has been an example of masterful turnaround.

The Wildcats lost 10 games this season and looked aimless in the middle of the season. But Calipari said he made a “tweak,” one he won’t identify until after the season.

He said it made all the difference, although he concedes he should have made the change sooner.

“Bottom line is I screwed this up in a couple different ways,” he said. “I waited probably two months longer than I should have to put the couple things in that changed how we were as a team.”

What’s obvious to everyone now is that the Wildcats have been molded into a championship contender.

“People are saying, ‘Boy, he looks more relaxed,’ ” Calipari said.

He seemed like it Tuesday when he joked with reporters that he was wheeled into practice in a casket, making the point that, “We’re not dead yet.”

But it did prove two things. Kentucky has made a great survival story and Calipari really is enjoying himself.

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“I am more relaxed,” he said, “because I know I don’t have to look out there and see a guy not going hard, a guy passing up a teammate, taking five bad shots. I’m not dealing with that anymore. This team has been empowered now and now I can just coach basketball.”

sryan@tribune.com

Twitter: @sryantribune

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