Calipari’s Blue-print propels Kentucky to the forefront of college basketball

As John Calipari explained it, he became a transformational figure in college basketball by mere happenstance. One epiphany followed another until — poof! — Kentucky was blazing a trail.

“Organic” is what Calipari calls the process that led him to re-invent Kentucky basketball on a foundation of freshmen. By now, the merry-go-round is familiar: Calipari starts anew and meshes an effective unit out of alpha individuals; Kentucky contends for a national championship; many of those players enter the next spring’s NBA Draft; the process repeats itself the next year.

Before arriving at UK in 2009, Calipari had experience with so-called one-and-done players at Memphis: most notably Derrick Rose and Tyreke Evans. He expected his first star freshman at UK, John Wall, to follow that example.

Of course, Wall did play one college season. The surprise was that three other freshmen — DeMarcus Cousins, Eric Bledsoe and Daniel Orton — did the same. Junior Patrick Patterson, who only played for Calipari in that 2009-10 season, also entered the draft.

“I started thinking, ‘Oh my gosh, what just happened?’” Calipari said.

At that draft, he watched player after player, family after family, realize their basketball dreams. Perhaps flushed with this supernova of success, he memorably called it “the biggest day in the history of Kentucky’s program.”

Recalling his controversial comment that night in New York City, Calipari subtly amended that statement. “When I said it was one of the biggest moments in the history of the program and everybody got mad, they look back now and say, ‘Well, he’s probably right,’” he said.

Any doubts about this Blue-print for basketball success disappeared when the second one-and-done Kentucky team advanced to the 2011 Final Four.

“It became, wait a minute, we can do this,” Calipari said. “It doesn’t hurt the program (or) the university.”

At the time Cousins had no idea he was part of a new way of building a college basketball program.

“I didn’t think it would turn into this,” he said. “We were just young kids who loved to play basketball. Who grew up together. …Who enjoyed playing in this atmosphere. But no clue that it would turn into what it’s turned into. Never in a million years did I think this would happen.”

Final Four appearances came in 2011, 2012, 2014 and 2015. A national championship in 2012. So far, 18 freshmen drafted in the first round.

Traditionally, freshmen needed time to adapt to college basketball. They needed to be protected. Then-North Carolina coach Dean Smith famously refused Sports Illustrated’s request to put a freshman named Michael Jordan on its cover.

Two former UK stars — Tayshaun Prince and Chuck Hayes — said they were not ready to assume lead roles as freshmen.

“I wasn’t,” Hayes said. “Not at all. It took a lot of growing pains, and I didn’t find my way until probably my sophomore year.”

Times have changed. Top prospects compete against each other regularly on the AAU circuit. Playing in front of college coaches and NBA scouts, they’ve grown accustomed to pressure. Their college careers, especially at Kentucky, embody the famous Groucho Marx entrance in the movie “Animal Crackers”: Hello, I must be going.

“It’s a different landscape now,” Alabama Coach Avery Johnson said. “When I was a freshman in college, the NBA wasn’t even in the forefront of my brain. I was trying to pass a trigonometry class.”

There’s another factor to explain why Kentucky’s dependence on freshmen works.

“Because he’s not getting just any type of freshmen,” Willie Cauley-Stein said. “He’s going after the best freshmen.”

It also helps that the best older players leave college basketball before completing their eligibility.

“They’re not going against those juniors and seniors that I was going against,” Prince said, “And those guys were, like, ‘Now, you’re going to learn.’ It’s a different game now.”

Of course, critics attacked Kentucky’s dependence on so-called one-and-done players. They said it mocks the idea of a college education. Calipari likes to point out that UK’s team grade-point average is regularly above 3.0, that 14 of his players have graduated and that “lifetime scholarships” enable any one-and-done player to return in the future and earn a degree.

Envy fuels the criticism, Cousins said. “They hate it because they want the same thing,” he said. “That’s what they’re trying to do. They’re trying to figure out a formula just like it. They can’t. So they hate it.”

Tennessee Coach Rick Barnes, a longtime friend of Calipari, subscribes to the envy theory.

“There’s not anybody in the country that wouldn’t go about it that way if they could do it,” he said.

Duke, most notably, has done just that. Counting transfer Rodney Hood, six Blue Devils who played one season for the program have been drafted since 2014.

There have been eight one-and-done players from Duke since the 2010 NBA Draft. Kansas has had seven one-and-done players in that time.

“Kentucky, Duke and Kansas have separated themselves in embracing this philosophy,” ESPN analyst Seth Greenberg said. “He (Calipari) was the architect of it. There’s no doubt about it.”

Duke, which once refused to retire a jersey because the player had not graduated, does not acknowledge following Kentucky’s lead.

Calipari has noticed a difference in how Kentucky and Duke are perceived. Questions surround renegade UK. Quiet acquiescence greets Duke.

“Every one of you,” Calipari said to a table full of reporters at the Southeastern Conference Media Day, “as soon as Duke did it, it was OK.

“That’s fine for me because here’s what they proved: Duke, North Carolina, Kansas. You can be about these kids, and it’d be OK. And it’s not going to hurt you as a coach. It’s not going to hurt your program. So I’m happy it happened.”

What also seems to make Calipari happy is to be on the cutting edge of change. Tellingly, when he’s praised Dean Smith, he invariably points out how innovative the North Carolina coaching icon was.

“He is, most of the time, ahead of the curve,” Greenberg said of Calipari. “He’s not afraid to be ahead of the curve. He’s not afraid to be different. But when you decide to be different, you’re going to face ridicule. He deals with it.”

Calipari breathes life into a famous statement by Georges Danton, a leading figure in the French revolution: de l’audace, encore de l’audace, et toujours de l’audace (audacity, more audacity and ever more audacity).

His signature dribble-drive offense is an example of Calipari’s audacity. Already a national figure at Memphis, he learned this new offense at a sit-down with a junior-college coach, Vance Wallberg.

“Vance, almost embarrassed, described his offense,” Gary Parrish of CBSSports.com wrote in an email message. “And Cal was intrigued. Next thing you know, this future Hall of Fame coach who’d already been to a Final Four is traveling to a junior college to watch Vance run practices. …I always thought that was interesting and a great example of how Cal is always open to new ideas and willing to try new things.”

More than once this preseason, Calipari has told audiences of his ever-forward thinking.

“I’m trying to figure out where all this stuff is going,” he said, “and I look at it and say, what is next? And how do we become first? And let everyone else keep chasing. And that’s my approach.”

That approach has been unfolding the last seven years, said Joe DeGregorio, who coached Calipari at Clarion. “If you look around the country, there are a few people trying to catch up to one-and-done,” he said. “Because they finally opened up their eyes and realized John’s got the jump on them.”

This story was originally published November 6, 2016 at 1:07 AM with the headline "Calipari’s Blue-print propels Kentucky to the forefront of college basketball."