Here’s how Kentucky basketball fans reacted when John Calipari appeared in Rupp Arena
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Game day: Arkansas 89, No. 12 Kentucky 79
Click below for more of the Herald-Leader and Kentucky.com’s coverage of Saturday night’s men’s basketball game between Kentucky and Arkansas in Rupp Arena.
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John Calipari walked onto the Rupp Arena court to a chorus of boos — and some cheering Kentucky basketball fans — in his return to Lexington on Saturday night.
Nearly 10 months after leaving the Wildcats to take over the Arkansas Razorbacks’ program, the Hall of Fame head coach was back in Rupp to take on UK and its new leader, Mark Pope.
Calipari entered the arena with a smile. There were boos throughout Rupp as he walked onto the court for the first time — wearing a dark, purplish coat with red accents, instead of blue — and again when he was officially introduced as the Razorbacks’ head coach after Arkansas’ starting five was announced to the crowd, though some fans applauded Calipari on both occasions.
Speculation related to how the Rupp Arena crowd would greet Calipari was the talk of college basketball leading up to Saturday’s 9 p.m. EST tipoff on ESPN, with some national pundits — and even former UK coach Rick Pitino — advising UK fans to give Calipari a warm reception.
Calipari himself talked in the days leading up to the game about what he expected to hear from the Kentucky crowd. “My guess is I’m gonna get booed,” he said, on his weekly radio show, the tone playful but the words sincere.
The former UK coach held a 25-minute press conference Thursday, and at one point there he was told that Pitino — the target of loud boos upon his return to Rupp as Louisville’s coach in 2001 — had released a video telling fans they should give Calipari a standing ovation.
The Arkansas coach looked genuinely taken off guard.
“That’s nice of him to do,” said Calipari, one of Pitino’s biggest coaching rivals for decades.
When it was implied Thursday that UK fans should show their appreciation for what Calipari did for the program — leading the Cats to the 2012 national title and four Final Four appearances in his first six seasons, taking over at a low point in the team’s storied history — he didn’t necessarily agree.
“I don’t expect that,” Calipari said. “... I’m the opposing coach now.”
Most of Calipari’s press conference Thursday was centered on his return to Lexington, and — as he has since he left for Arkansas in April, after 15 years as UK’s head coach — he had positive things to say about his tenure at Kentucky and the current state of the program under Pope, who he has also praised at various times over the past several months.
Calipari said he and his wife, Ellen, had given their “heart and soul” to the university and community. The coach explained that Ellen Calipari was “under the weather” and would not travel to Lexington for the game, but there were plenty of other familiar faces on the Rupp Arena court Saturday night.
Longtime Kentucky assistant Kenny Payne, All-American point guard Tyler Ulis, and the coach’s son, Brad Calipari, are among several Arkansas staff members with UK basketball ties. Three of the players from Calipari’s final Kentucky team — Adou Thiero, D.J. Wagner and Zvonimir Ivisic — play prominent roles for the Razorbacks this season, as do some former UK recruits who followed the coach to Fayetteville.
“I’m not bitter in any way,” Calipari said Thursday. “What I did was right for me and my family, but it was also right for Kentucky. And Mark Pope has done a fabulous job. He knows that program, because he played in it. He was the right guy for that job. And I’m walking back into that environment — yeah, there may be some boos. There may be a lot of boos. That doesn’t change anything for me. It doesn’t change the history. It doesn’t change my history. None of that.”
Calipari went on to explain that his focus was on getting Arkansas, which entered Saturday’s game with a 1-6 SEC record, on the right track. He also looked back on his own involvement in the community while at UK, particularly the charitable endeavors he led as the Wildcats’ coach, something that drew Pope’s praise earlier that day.
“Do I have a soft spot for Kentucky? Yes! I was there 15 years!” Calipari said on the day before he departed for his return to Lexington. “We gave our heart and soul, and not only to basketball. Yes, we did a lot of stuff in basketball during that time that was pretty special. But we also were involved in communities, when there was flooding, when there were hurricanes. …
“Ellen and I did things that we didn’t want in the paper. That you just did with people that we knew or people that we felt we needed to help. And I want to do the same here.”
This story was originally published February 1, 2025 at 9:15 PM.
