It’s a free country, but there is no rational reason for UK fans to boo John Calipari

In the long-running melodrama that is Kentucky Wildcats men’s basketball, one of the most-anticipated episodes ever is nigh at hand.

The next time the ball is tipped inside Rupp Arena, ex-UK head man John Calipari will be back in the Bluegrass but coaching against the Wildcats from the Arkansas bench.

Of all the aspects of Saturday night’s meeting between Calipari’s struggling Razorbacks (12-8, 1-6 SEC) and Mark Pope’s Wildcats (15-5, 4-3), one of the most fascinating is how UK backers will welcome back the coach they once adored but had very much soured upon.

From the time Calipari ended his 15-year run as top Cat last spring to become boss Hog, former Cal-era Kentucky players such as Willie Cauley-Stein have implored the Big Blue Nation to receive their former head coach with grace.

On Saturday at 9 p.m., we’ll see if those words have been heeded.

Calipari will be the third ex-UK head man to coach against the Wildcats in Lexington during the Rupp Arena era.

One of those returns was a celebration. When Tubby Smith brought his alma mater, High Point, into Rupp on New Year’s Eve, 2021, it was part of UK retiring a jersey in his honor and raising it to the Rupp Arena rafters.

Even as Kentucky obliterated High Point 92-48, it was a day filled with affection as UK saluted a coach who had represented the commonwealth during his tenure (1997 though 2007) with indisputable class.

Alas, Rick Pitino’s return to Rupp as Louisville head man on Dec. 29, 2001, had produced the polar opposite of Smith’s friendly greeting. In fact, the first time Ricky P. came back to UK as the coach of one of Kentucky’s most-disliked rivals yielded one of the most heated fan atmospheres in our state’s sports history.

Seething ever since Pitino had taken the Louisville job the prior spring, Cats fans unleashed that day on “Traitor Rick.”

Upon his introduction, boos rained down on Pitino from all corners of Rupp Arena. The signs, one of which compared the basketball coach to traitors from U.S. history such as Benedict Arnold and the so-called “American Taliban,” John Walker Lindh, were brutal.

Of course, the level of anti-Pitino fervor on display that day was turbo-charged by the coach, after failing in a stint as Boston Celtics head man, having switched sides in our state’s most-galvanizing rivalry.

But passions were also inflamed by fear, the memories Kentucky backers had of Pitino’s stellar eight-season run (1989-97) as UK head man and the worry he would replicate that magical era at U of L.

After Tubby Smith and Kentucky put an 82-62 smashing on Pitino’s Cardinals, it was left to the venerable UK equipment manager, Bill Keightley, to put a bow on what had been a day of high emotion for Big Blue Nation.

“I love Rick like a son,” Keightley said. “But sometimes a son needs his butt kicked.”

The context of Calipari’s impending return to Rupp Arena as a visiting coach is quite different.

While Kentucky and Arkansas are in the same conference and have some shared history of high-level hoops contention, the Razorbacks are not a UK rival on the level U of L is.

Unlike Pitino, who left Kentucky for Boston in 1997 off of back-to-back trips to the NCAA Tournament championship game, Calipari’s departure came at a time when many UK backers were pleading for a coaching change — even as they despaired one could not happen.

As Kentucky failed over Calipari’s final four seasons to advance even once to the second weekend of the NCAA Tournament or the finals of the SEC tourney, it appeared the University of Kentucky was hamstrung by the massive contract buyout (around $34 million after last season) it would have taken to remove the coach.

Calipari, however, did UK a solid by finding his own exit route to Fayetteville and leaving in a manner that did not cost the University of Kentucky one red cent of buyout cash.

While the frustration with Calipari’s final four UK seasons was understandable, he did also take Kentucky to four Final Fours over five seasons from 2011 through 2015, a run that included the 2012 NCAA championship.

Making adroit and generous use of the bully pulpit that comes with being the Kentucky men’s basketball coach, Calipari also raised millions of dollars for Kentuckians in need, be it tornado victims in Western Kentucky or flood victims in Eastern Kentucky.

Given all those realities, it is hard to see what the impetus would be for directing hostility at Calipari, not to mention former Wildcats players Adou Thiero, D.J. Wagner and Zvonimir Ivisic, during the pregame introductions Saturday night in Rupp.

Look, it’s a free country, but I don’t see any rational reason why UK backers should boo John Calipari when he is introduced in his old Kentucky home Saturday night.

Cats’ coaches vs. the Cats

The records against Kentucky of select UK men’s basketball coaches who have also coached against the Wildcats:

▪ John Calipari 2-4

▪ Tubby Smith 0-6

▪ Rick Pitino 6-12

▪ Eddie Sutton 0-1

▪ John Mauer 7-22

This story was originally published January 29, 2025 at 12:30 PM.

Mark Story

Lexington Herald-Leader

859-444-4731

Mark Story has worked in the Lexington Herald-Leader sports department since Aug. 27, 1990, and has been a Herald-Leader sports columnist since 2001. I have covered every Kentucky-Louisville football game since 1994, every UK-U of L basketball game but three since 1996-97 and every Kentucky Derby since 1994. Support my work with a digital subscription