One of the oddest chapters in Kentucky basketball history comes to an end Saturday night

Forty-three weeks to the day that John Calipari met Hunter Yurachek in a Phoenix hotel room, the former Kentucky basketball coach will return to the place he called home for 15 years, set to square off with the program he led to the stratosphere of the sport, and play the starring role in one more surreal scene inside Rupp Arena.

The home of the Wildcats has seen so many of those in recent months, all of them set in motion back in April, on the other side of the country, where Calipari made a decision that shocked the college basketball world.

Of the strange scenes that followed, none will be stranger than the one Saturday night in Rupp, where Calipari will walk onto the court — likely wearing red instead of accents of blue — and lead his Arkansas Razorbacks in a game against Kentucky.

It all started on April 5 of last year, 15 days after Calipari’s Wildcats lost to Oakland in another NCAA Tournament stunner, on the eve of the Final Four.

By the time the Kentucky coach agreed to meet with Yurachek — the athletics director at Arkansas who was searching for a new men’s basketball coach — at the site of the national semifinals, UK AD Mitch Barnhart had already confirmed that Calipari would be back in Lexington for a 16th season.

But the conversation between Calipari and Yurachek evolved from an advising session on who should be the next leader of the Razorbacks to an offer for the Wildcats coach to take the job himself. By the end of the weekend, he had agreed to do just that.

One week after Calipari left Kentucky for its SEC rival, Rupp Arena hosted its first strange event in the aftermath of that departure.

The hiring of Mark Pope — a former UK player — as the new coach of the Wildcats was met with shock at first. The Wildcats’ fan base came around quickly enough, and by the time Pope was ready to reintroduce himself to Big Blue Nation on a Sunday afternoon in Rupp, the response was overwhelming.

Fans came in droves to his introductory press conference, 20,000 or so filing into the building — with thousands more turned away outside — transforming the occasion into a revival atmosphere that raised eyebrows across college basketball.

Six months after that, an even more surreal sight: Rick Pitino — enemy No. 1 in Rupp Arena for the better part of the past two decades — walked onto the court, wearing a blue shirt with a UK logo, and the crowd greeted him with a thunderous ovation.

Pope put his arm around his former coach, who spoke to the UK fans that had booed him mercilessly for so many years. “I am so happy to be back,” Pitino said, the Big Blue Madness crowd hanging on every word.

The Hall of Fame coach who resurrected Kentucky from the depths of probation and lifted the Cats to the pinnacle of college basketball looked back on his time in Lexington and then forward to what was coming next.

“And now we get to root for a gentleman that — there have been a lot of great coaches here, a lot of great ones — but we get to root for someone that that name Kentucky is what he’s all about,” Pitino said. “It’s not about Pope. … The most selfless, humble young man I’ve ever coached in my lifetime. One of the great, great examples of what Kentucky basketball is all about. Mark Pope is going to lead you to greatness, in every sense of the word.”

No one mentioned Calipari by name that night. But Pitino’s remarks — whether intentional or not — surely summoned thoughts of his longtime rival for all who were listening and knew the backstory.

On Friday — 16 weeks after Pitino’s Big Blue Madness appearance — this surreal UK basketball trilogy will come to its natural end with the return of Calipari, who will be back in Lexington one night before he walks onto that Rupp Arena court under the strangest of circumstances.

John Calipari’s return to Rupp

The careers of Calipari and Pitino have been linked for nearly four decades.

From Pitino’s involvement in getting Calipari his first head coaching job at UMass, his alma mater, to their eventual — often bitter — rivalry that spanned across multiple school affiliations, the thought of one of these Hall of Fame coaches often conjures up the image of the other.

They performed similar miracle acts in quickly turning around Kentucky basketball from two of its lowest points. And, for a time, it seemed as if they’d both leave UK in similar fashion.

When Pitino departed Lexington to take over the Boston Celtics in 1997, he became the first — and remains the only — coach in Kentucky basketball history to walk away from the Wildcats completely on his own terms, with a vast majority of the fan base still in his corner.

Through the first several years of the Calipari era — a stretch that included an NCAA title and four Final Four appearances in his first six seasons — the same story was seemingly unfolding.

There were annual rumors — some of them credible — linking Calipari to various NBA jobs. But he never left. Until it ultimately became clear to many that his tenure at Kentucky had run its course. And while Calipari technically walked away on his own terms, he did so not with the adulation of an entire fan base but with many in BBN closely following the terms of his buyout and more than happy to see him go.

The ironic twist for Pitino was that — while he left a hero, the most celebrated UK coach since Adolph Rupp — he returned a villain. When he walked onto the Rupp Arena court on Dec. 29, 2001, as the head coach of the Louisville Cardinals, the boos were overwhelming. Signs in the crowd denigrated him. T-shirts with his name alongside Benedict Arnold and Judas Iscariot could be found in plenty of wardrobes within the commonwealth.

A vocal portion of Kentucky fans despised him.

Pitino released a video Thursday afternoon looking back on that day, which he described as the most difficult of his 16-year career at Louisville. “The reception — it tore me up apart, because I loved that place so much.” Pitino went on to praise Calipari for his tenure with the Wildcats and asked UK fans to show “class” on Saturday night and greet the Arkansas coach with a standing ovation. “Show him what respect and admiration is all about,” he said.

Calipari is highly unlikely to receive the level of animosity that Pitino did upon his return in 2001.

He rubbed some UK fans the wrong way toward the end — and a few never warmed up to him much from the beginning — but Calipari put four banners in the Rupp Arena rafters, including the one that means the most, and his charitable work across Kentucky and beyond its borders during his tenure was truly admirable.

Even as he prepared to leave Lexington, there were still plenty of fans in his corner, remembering the good times and hoping he could find a way to rekindle them as UK’s coach.

That he left for an SEC rival will be unforgivable to some, for now. There will be some boos Saturday night, almost certainly. But Pitino’s ovation in October is likely a foreshadowing event of some similar occurrence in Calipari’s future.

Pope, who has praised Calipari and lauded the contributions he’s made to UK basketball repeatedly since taking the job, including in comments this week, didn’t offer a prediction on how exactly the Rupp fans would react Saturday.

“It’s a little bit of a complicated relationship right now, because he’s coaching the other team,” he said Wednesday night. “And so that always makes it complicated. But I know BBN, man. I just know our fan base, and I know there will be so much emotion, because we care so much. So there’ll be so much emotion in the gym on Saturday. And as time goes on and circumstances change, there’s going to be a time when Cal walks back into this arena and he is gonna feel all of the love that BBN possibly has to offer, because that’s what we do with our family.”

Pitino, remember, left Rupp for the last time as Louisville’s coach back in 2016, walking through the tunnel with one finger extended toward the heckling UK fans after Kentucky had beaten his Cardinals, before a triumphant return that took nearly eight years — and a coaching change — to transpire.

Another consequence of Calipari’s departure — and the selection of Pope as his successor — was that it facilitated the final stage of Pitino’s transition from longtime villain to UK basketball hero. And those circumstances, by extension, made Calipari one of the biggest heels for many in BBN.

Another strange twist in this saga is that Calipari could have come to town this weekend as an even bigger enemy of the state of Kentucky had his move gone according to plan. Instead, the 65-year-old coach has seemingly repeated many of the same mistakes that led to his falling out with some in the Kentucky fan base, and he’ll come limping into Lexington as a result.

Kentucky up, Arkansas down

Not only will everything about Saturday night be an uncomfortable situation for Calipari, in general, it’s shaping up as an unpleasant experience once the ball is actually tipped.

Pope didn’t do his predecessor any favors by hitting all of the right notes from the moment he directly addressed Kentucky fans back in April, immediately capturing their hearts with his words before constructing a roster that was built for November, December and January (and possibly March and April, too).

The new UK coach told the fans exactly what they wanted to hear and then delivered an on-court experience that was rich in what Calipari’s final Kentucky teams often consistently lacked. The Cats have obliterated the teams they were expected to beat. And they’ve beaten some teams they weren’t supposed to.

And Calipari didn’t do himself any favors by building his first Arkansas roster in the vision of so many that ultimately disappointed over those final years at Kentucky. These Razorbacks came into the season high on upside, for sure, with plenty of projected NBA draft prospects rich in potential but relatively low in proven ability at the high-major college level.

The Hogs’ coaching and support staff around Calipari also looks strikingly similar to those who surrounded him during his final years in Lexington.

Arkansas was No. 16 in the preseason AP poll, voters continuing to buy into the Calipari hype. Pope’s team — consisting totally of transfers and freshmen, no stars in the entire group — was No. 23 in those rankings.

They meet this weekend with the Cats ranked No. 12 — having spent the previous 10 weeks inside the top 10 and just four days removed from a 78-73 win at No. 8 Tennessee, despite missing key players to injury — with the Razorbacks well on their way to missing the NCAA Tournament altogether.

While Pope has introduced a fun, effective scoring approach more akin to something you’d see in the current, analytically inclined version of the NBA, the former Kentucky coach is overseeing a squad that is just barely inside the top 100 nationally in the offensive efficiency ratings.

Arkansas ranks 12th in the SEC in points per game, 13th in 3-point attempts and 12th in 3-point percentage. Kentucky is third nationally in scoring and boasts one of the most effective 3-point offenses in the country.

The difference in win-loss results has been just as striking.

Kentucky is now 6-1 against teams ranked in the AP top 15, 15-5 overall and 4-3 in the SEC.

Arkansas got off to an 0-5 start in league play. As the losses piled up — and even before his Hogs hit a wall — Calipari was leaning on the phrases that had grown tired to many toward the end of his UK tenure. The talk of his players not being robots or machines, of building toward the postseason while his team struggled in the present and of learning from mistakes and making necessary changes.

“I just love the spirit of the team,” Calipari said after Arkansas stormed back from down 15 to beat Georgia last week, avoiding an 0-6 start in SEC play. “And it’s our chance to write our own story — how this thing finishes. And I told my wife, ‘I’m sorry I put you through this stuff.’ I told Hunter, ‘Sorry, I’m putting you through this stuff.’ Told the fans, ‘Sorry, I’m putting you through this stuff.’

“But you know what? Thinking about it for me, I have been so blessed my whole life. My whole life. People look at me and say, ‘How in the world?’ I can’t go crazy over a bump in the road. I can’t. I’ve been too blessed. The second thing is I want this to make me a better coach. I want this to give me some ideas. When you win 30 in a row — which I’ve done a couple times — it’s a totally different feel than what we went through. And I told them, ‘If it’s going to make me a better coach going through this, it’s going to make them better players going through this.’ But it’s hard. You want to win every game. Come on. You know me as a coach and what I’ve done, and what the expectations are the minute I step in.”

Calipari went on to say that he had received overwhelming support from others in the Arkansas athletics community while his first team there struggled. In addition to the losses, one of his star players — former UK recruit Boogie Fland — was sidelined with an apparent season-ending injury before the win over Georgia.

“And like I said, I’m happy we won a game for them — the players,” Calipari said. “We needed to get off the schneid. When Boogie went down, you know everybody was saying, ‘They may not win a game.’ Well, that was wrong. Now let’s see what we can do and where we can go from there.”

Three days later, Arkansas lost a home game to Oklahoma, which enters this weekend with a 2-6 record in the SEC.

Will UK basketball fans boo Calipari?

On his weekly radio show, Calipari leaned into the segment about his next opponent with a joke.

“Who do we play Saturday night?” Calipari asked, that familiar, sarcastic grin on his face.

The longtime UK coach has been reluctant to talk too much about his past in Lexington, often focusing on his present and future in Fayetteville when pressed to discuss his departure from Kentucky and the feelings he would have when it was time to return.

He spoke for nearly 10 uninterrupted minutes on the subject this week.

“Walking in that arena — storied arena — and walking in the wrong door. The other door,” Calipari began referencing the strangeness of being a visitor in Rupp Arena. “Seeing my friends the night before. Having my friends — I mean dear friends, lifelong friends — but they’re Kentucky fans. Their whole life, they’ve been Kentucky fans. Now, I just hope they’re neutral, but they are Kentucky fans.

“We gave our heart and soul. Ellen, you know, was like the mother to those kids. And so, yes, there is going to be some emotion.”

Ellen Calipari, the coach’s wife, was a fixture at the courtside table opposite the UK bench for 15 years, locally famous for baking brownies for the Kentucky players on their birthdays.

The former Wildcats coach talked about sending a group text to all of the players on one of his UK teams earlier that day. He spoke again of how “blessed” he’s been while navigating college basketball over his career. Calipari noted that UK was going through hard times when he took the job in 2009, comparing that situation to the one his Razorbacks are in right now.

He said he doesn’t look at social media — another talking point that came up often during his time at Kentucky — so he’s not exactly sure what people are saying about him right now.

“Don’t even tell me. I don’t care,” he said. “It has no bearing on me. I don’t know that person. Now, if you want to tell me (what) somebody that loves me and cares about me is saying, tell me. Other than that, I’m not listening.”

Calipari broke down the team’s weekly schedule and confirmed that they would be traveling to Lexington on Friday. He expected to make plans with friends who still live here. He figured he’d probably hit up his usual breakfast haunt with his old pals — “I’ll probably go to my Dunkin Donuts with my boys that morning” — the day of the game.

“We’ll sit down, have some coffee. They’ll tell me how we should play,” Calipari joked. “Look, I had a great run there, fond memories. Love the people. Fans are great. You know, you got some of the crazies, but that’s everywhere. The fans are great because they care about the program. They love the program there, and they adopt the players as their own.”

Calipari said he’s seen that same trait in Arkansas fans, telling those in the crowd that gathered for his radio show that he hoped they’d found someone on this struggling team that they’d fallen in love with as a player.

Three of those Razorbacks — Adou Thiero, D.J. Wagner and Zvonimir Ivisic — were Wildcats a year ago.

“My guess is they’re gonna get booed. My guess is I’m gonna get booed,” Calipari said, taking on that high-pitched, comedic tone UK fans are so familiar with, drawing laughter from his audience. “But that’s all part of it.”

He then reminded everyone of the “bazooka holes” he has from all the shots he’s taken over the years, yet another throwback phrase to his time in Kentucky.

“It’ll be interesting. Can’t say I’m looking forward to it. I’m looking forward to coaching. But to walk in and, you know, the vibe — I don’t know how I’m going to take it, to be honest with you. I mean, that was a special time in my life, in Ellen’s life. And 15 years, we gave. Fifteen,” he said before repeating another old joke. “To be on that job for 15 years? Every year is dog years there. It’s seven years. … It’s dog years.”

He talked about wanting to find a way to honor the late Joe B. Hall — “my biggest supporter,” Calipari said — while he was in town. After reminiscing about Hall and saying he hoped legendary Arkansas coach Nolan Richardson would attend more of his practices in the future, Calipari offered some closing thoughts on the current state of his career and his return to the place where he’s coached the longest.

“I just say this, folks. It’s hard for me to want anybody to feel sorry for me, because of what has happened for me over my life. Hopefully I’ve passed it forward. But there’s times — how many of you have had some crazy adversity hit you in this room? You know what I’m saying? Stuff that you look back and say, ‘I didn’t think I’d make it at the time. Did not think I’d make it. But you know what? I came out on the other side, and it changed me and made me different.’

“I just want this to make me a better coach. Just make me a better coach. Make me better at what I’m doing for these young people. Make me think a little bit more about, ‘All right, we may have to do some things different. …’”

Calipari trailed off, chuckling to himself before saying one last thing about Saturday night.

“But, yeah, it’s an interesting one — this weekend.”

Saturday

Arkansas at No. 12 Kentucky

When: 9 p.m.

TV: ESPN

Radio: WLAP-AM 630, WBUL-FM 98.1

Records: Arkansas 12-8 (1-6 SEC), Kentucky 15-5 (4-3 SEC)

Series: Kentucky leads 36-14

Last meeting: Kentucky won 111-102 on March 2, 2024, in Lexington

This story was originally published January 31, 2025 at 6:00 AM.

Ben Roberts

Lexington Herald-Leader

859-429-2848

Ben Roberts is the University of Kentucky men’s basketball beat writer for the Lexington Herald-Leader. He has previously specialized in UK basketball recruiting coverage and created and maintained the Next Cats blog. He is a Franklin County native and first joined the Herald-Leader in 2006. Support my work with a digital subscription