There’s little doubt that John Calipari will go down in history as the head coach most closely associated with the one-and-done era of college basketball.
Derrick Rose, Tyreke Evans, John Wall, and now, Brandon Knight. One after the other, elite point guards have used, and are still using, his program as a way station between high school and the NBA. Fresh off winning 35 games last year in his first year at Kentucky with Wall and three other freshmen selected in the first round of the 2010 NBA Draft, Calipari is aiming for a similar run this year.
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It’s a stunning track record, especially the recruiting part. The only problem is both of Calipari’s career Final Four appearances, with his former teams at Memphis and Massachusetts, were later vacated.
But ESPN’s Dick Vitale has a legal argument for that: If they didn’t accuse the coach, he should be above reproach.
“I thought the Memphis deal was a total raw deal,” Vitale said in a conference call on Tuesday. “When the NCAA walks in, and they declare a kid eligible, and they do it on two occasions, and they tell the athletic director and they tell coaching staff, ‘Play the kid. Play him, he’s eligible,’ what school in America wouldn’t play Derrick Rose if the NCAA, the guiding light, the people that make the decision, come in and tell you he should play?”
It may be just a coincidence, but the Wildcats’ top pro prospect this season, Turkish center Enes Kanter, remains in limbo while he’s the subject of an ongoing NCAA probe. Vitale says make a decision already.
“You don’t have to be a Rhodes Scholar to sift and analyze as the material comes in, making a determination if the kid is eligible,” Vitale said. “I really think that it’s a joke, that it’s become comical. It’s an embarrassment to our sport.”
For all of Calipari’s one-and-done mastery, however, Vitale isn’t picking him to win an NCAA title.
“I’ve told him this, and I feel strongly about this and could be totally wrong,” Vitale said. “I don’t think that you’ll win a national championship with a reloading of your roster year after year. … I think they’ll win a lot of games, but I do think it’s difficult to win a national title.”
