For John Calipari and UK basketball, an upset of No. 1 Kansas would be a tone changer
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Preview: No. 17 Kentucky vs. No. 1 Kansas
Click below to read more of the Herald-Leader’s and Kentucky.com’s preview coverage ahead of Tuesday night’s Kentucky-Kansas men’s basketball game at the Champions Classic in Chicago.
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The accumulation of shared history means the coaching careers of John Calipari and Bill Self will always be linked.
Calipari and Self having split victories while coaching against each other in two men’s basketball NCAA Tournament championship games — Self wining in 2008, Calipari in 2012 — assures that.
On Tuesday night, Calipari and Self will square off again as No. 17 Kentucky (2-0) faces No. 1 Kansas (2-0) in the nightcap of the annual State Farm Champions Classic at Chicago’s United Center. No. 2 Duke (1-1) and No. 4 Michigan State (1-1) will tip off in the first game at 7 p.m. (EST).
The latest renewal of the Calipari-Self rivalry — it will be the 11th matchup with Self for Calipari as UK’s coach with each having won five of those previous meetings — comes at an interesting time for both coaches.
If one overlooks the facts that Kansas was ensnared in the FBI’s 2017 investigation into the underbelly of college basketball recruiting practices and that the Jayhawks in September dismissed a player, guard Arterio Morris, from their team after he was arrested after being accused of rape, Self has been thriving in recent seasons.
In 2021-22, Kansas earned Self a second NCAA championship, pushing the coach’s historical legacy onto an elevated plane.
The relentless on-court excellence of Self’s program allowed the Jayhawks to pass Kentucky as the all-time men’s college hoops wins leader during the 2022 NCAA tourney and to end last season with a 10-victory advantage over UK.
Earlier this month, KU announced that it had signed Self, 60, to a new contract that will pay the coach $13 million in 2023-24 alone and $53 million over the next five seasons.
The pact pushed Self past Calipari — set to make $44.9 million over the remaining five seasons of his UK deal — as the highest-paid coach in men’s college basketball.
Self even came out mostly unscathed this fall after the NCAA investigation into the KU program that arose out of the FBI investigation was finally resolved. After NCAA investigators initially charged Kansas with five Level I violations, an Independent Accountability Resolution Process panel downgraded those charges to three Level II and four Level III violations.
As a result, Kansas avoided a postseason ban. Self did not personally face any additional penalty. KU did vacate 15 victories from the 2017-18 season after a Kansas player was retroactively ruled to be ineligible.
Those vacated victories mean Kentucky will officially take a 2,377-2,372 all-time wins advantage over the Jayhawks into Tuesday night’s game.
Conversely, the three most recent seasons have been a slog for Calipari, 64, and UK. In that span, the Kentucky coach has presided over:
▪ The worst season record (9-16) in the modern history of UK men’s hoops (2020-21);
▪ The worst NCAA Tournament loss by seeding, a round of 64 defeat to No. 15 Saint Peter’s, in Kentucky history (2021-22);
▪ An unsatisfying 22-12 campaign that also ended in the NCAA tourney’s opening weekend (2022-23).
Over the past three seasons, Kentucky has gone 6-16 against teams ranked in the AP Top 25. The Wildcats are 40-34 in that time frame against teams from college basketball’s six major conferences (the football Power Five and the Big East) plus Gonzaga.
Interestingly, after two seasons in which Calipari stacked veterans largely out of the transfer portal onto Kentucky’s rosters, the UK coach has gone back in 2023-24 to the freshman-heavy formula that fueled the success of his early tenure leading the Wildcats.
There are five freshmen in the eight-player rotation Calipari has been using early this season — with two more freshmen expected to assume prominent roles after one returns from an injury and the other has his college eligibility confirmed by the NCAA.
By contrast, Self’s roster construction continues to follow the prevailing ethos in men’s college hoops that the key to success is to “get old and stay old.”
Among the top eight players in the KU rotation so far this year, six are at least 21 years old; two are at least 23 years old (and three more will turn 23 during this season); one is already 25.
The disparity between the Kentucky and Kansas rosters in terms of maturity is why winning an early-season showdown between the two figures to be a heavy lift for the youthful Wildcats.
Nevertheless, after three challenging seasons for UK basketball, it would be a welcome tone changer for the Wildcats program and its fans if Calipari could prevail in his latest meeting with his long-running coaching nemesis.
This story was originally published November 13, 2023 at 11:12 AM.
