John Calipari likens Kentucky basketball to Alabama, Georgia football demanding new facilities

John Calipari has come out and demanded better basketball facilities for Kentucky basketball while referencing Alabama and Georgia football. 

The Kentucky Wildcats, under the stewardship of John Calipari, has been one of the more successful programs in college basketball.

As such, Calipari has demanded a new basketball facility. In a report by The Athletic’s Kyle Tucker, Calipari has referred to Kentucky as a basketball school while also bringing up some of the country’s best football programs in Alabama and Georgia to denote the money they get towards their facilities.

Additionally, in the article, Tucker reports that Calipari has expressed how the state should want this, and the school administration should be behind this project.

“This state deserves that,” said Calipari, who had to end practice early last week when the roof at UK’s Joe Craft Center, built in 2007, sprung a leak. That wasn’t the first time. “Everybody should be behind this. Our administration. Look, our baseball facility might be the nicest in the country, and I’m happy about that. Our football facility, we spent $200 million. Soccer, unbelievable. Now, the track — I love it. And now, I would say, the administration should be like, we’re doing this. How about the state? If this is the University for Kentucky, and it’s the basketball program for the state, which it is, how about the state says, ‘We’re in. We’re gonna invest.’ I’ll tell you right now, Anthony Davis gave $350,000 on a text to me (for flood relief). Do you know what our former players would do? They just gotta see it: What is it? So it’s the next challenge that we all have.”

Whoa, that is a mouthful. Calipari does have a point about Kentucky being deserving of a better basketball facility, and he is correct about former alumni potentially being willing to help contribute to delivering a better facility for future wildcats.

Kentucky basketball: John Calipari demanding new practice facilities

While the Kentucky basketball program is among the best in the country under Calipari, there have been far too many times in his tenure where the Wildcats have come up empty in the biggest moments. Just last season, we saw Kentucky fall to Saint Peter’s in the first round of the tournament. Moreover, under Nick Saban, Alabama has participated in nine national championship games, winning five. Additionally, Georgia is the reigning national champion.

For all the good that he has done, if we include the vacated year of the Memphis run to the national championship, Calipari has only appeared in the big game three times, winning one title in 2012 under Anthony Davis against Thomas Robinson and the Kansas Jayhawks. Calipari’s last trip to a championship game was in 2014, a loss to Shabazz Napier and the UConn Huskies.

While John Calipari has a right to want a better facility for his team, he has not exactly had as much success as Alabama and Georgia football has had in recent memory. A couple more national titles should change that, but let’s see what happens if his team returns to the NCAA Tournament and makes up for what happened against the Peacocks.

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