What John Calipari has done for Kentucky will be appreciated … But not now

The debate in Kentucky this week is how WildCat basketball fans should greet their former coach, John Calipari, when he returned to Rupp Arena on Saturday as the Arkansas Razorbacks chief.

Acclamation? Huer? Do nothing?

The answer is what they want, of course. It’s a basketball match. Part of the pleasure of being a fan reacts (or reacts excessively) in any imaginable, good or bad ways. Calipari is 65 years old and a long time ago, proved that he gives as well as he takes it. He will survive.

“I guess I’m going to be hue,” said Calipari this week. “But that is one of them. Pull, you are hué. I did this for so long, I will tell you, I have bazooka holes in my body. So when you shoot arrows, it doesn’t even strike the skin. “”

The humor of a gallows as a tactic of deviation seems appropriate because also tested in combat that Calipari enters the enemy arenas that despise it, it is not the one he is eager to live.

For 15 years – or at least all except the last couple when success began to be tempered, especially in March – Rupp was the castle of Calipari and Kentucky was his camelot.

Now he will come back, probably carrying a red sports coat of Arkansas-an external symbol of the place where he is now that he has never kissed at his previous stops (that is to say, He was not always wearing Kentucky Blue).

Kentucky fans are free to see Calipari as they wish. There is little debate according to which the program had become expired at the end of its time there. Cal probably did everyone service by essentially removing a life contract and leaving for Arkansas last spring. However, he left and for a dry rival no less. He also took many of his players, recruits and staff with him.

It is not as if British fans would make fun of a former retired coach. One day, Cal will have his flowers. When Rick Pitino finally returned to Midnight Madness last year as a guest of the new coach Mark Pope, he was applauded. There was not such love when he directed Louisville.

What is not a debate, however, is what Calipari has done for the Kentucky program. Maybe he was so supported that the uncertain nature of his beginning is forgotten, but things were uncertain in 2009 when he arrived from Memphis.

The Wildcats had not reached an oven final in 11 seasons. The recruitment towards the end of the Tubby Smith era and the two -year race of Billy Gillis had been mainly pedestrians. The teams were not talented, exciting or just as successful. There was a real question of whether the expectations and the intensity of the work were too important for anyone to manage. Essentially, only Pitino – a full -fledged massive personality – had really covered him in modern times.

But even left.

Kentucky may believe that victory is a dawn, and its history gives reasons. Nothing is guaranteed, however. In 2009, when Calipari arrived in Lexington, Kentucky was not alone. The longtime rival of Indiana was also looking for a formula to return in importance.

Indiana is still looking for.

Calipari, on the other hand, inspired immediate life not only in the program, but in the whole state. It was a whirlwind. His first recruitment lesson included John Wall, Demarcus Cousins ​​and Eric Bledsoe. This would only improve sometimes – a breathtaking talent tour that has not only won matches but delighted fans.

He groaned the state that the first off -season, using a book tour to present themselves to them and to them – flying helicopters in small cities and spending hours in the guests of the service station and the pause rooms coal mines and low -power radio stations. He would catch old -fashioned breakfasts with Joe B. Hall to find out more about the past and use social media for the new school to make the place cool.

This first team went 35-3, won the dry before a horrible shooting evening wanted the Wildcats in the Elite Eight. The following season, they were in the Final Four. The one after that, they were national champions.

It was part of a lightning race – Kentucky recorded an average of 30.5 wins per season for its first decade in Lexington.

Maybe this is considered inevitable, just the push of a button or two, but it was much more complicated. Cal spoke the other day the way Kentucky had “good bones” when he took it back, and that’s right. However, he needed an overhaul. He provided it.

The larger the work, the more intense the spotlights, Calipari has tried not only to match it, but to use it positively. When, let’s say, there have been floods in eastern Kentucky, Calipari would organize a collection of television funds, players working on the telephone bank. He kissed individual fans, took the time to meet everyone and served as a spokesperson for the school and the State – each too often neglected by the country as a whole.

In the end, you must win, especially in March. Calipari has not done this in the past six years there. He should have won at least one more national title – namely with team 38-0 which he brought in the Final Four to fall to Wisconsin in 2015.

It was controversial and difficult and uncomfortable. Everyone wanted better and no one was wrong for that. Only Adolph Rupp himself has led cats longer. Cal has therefore left and tries to rebuild Arkansas, to unequal results so far. The Kentucky, on the other hand, moved into a new day – with the former player Mark Pope in charge of a sympathetic and disjointed team full of potential.

Do the above elements deserve rugging joy? No, not necessarily. There will undoubtedly be applause, but it is still a dry basketball match.

What John Calipari has done for Kentucky will finally be appreciated.

Saturday, expect a lot of hoots. The cheers will one day come.