In this winter of Kentucky Wildcats basketball discontent, I try to ask everyone who emails me demanding a UK coaching change two questions:
1. Do you really think Kentucky should pay John Calipari the $52 million contract buyout it would take to remove him without cause?
2. If UK had an opening for a men’s head basketball coach, who would you like to see Kentucky hire?
A surprising number of people have answered question one affirmatively, figuring, one surmises, that it’s not their $52 million.
Alas, the second question does not yield any consistent, realistic names.
That there is not an obvious, rising candidate for one of college basketball’s marquee coaching positions has ramifications larger than Kentucky.
At some point in the not-too-distant future, many of the most prestigious coaching positions in NCAA men’s college hoops are going to open. The reason is the long-in-the-tooth status of the current occupants of those jobs.
Syracruse’s Jim Boeheim is 76. Duke’s Mike Krzyzewski is 73. North Carolina’s Roy Williams is 70. Michigan State’s Tom Izzo is 66. On Wednesday, UK’s Calipari turned 62. At a youthful 58, Bill Self at Kansas is “the baby” on this list of coaching Hall of Famers.
When the inevitable changing of the guard atop men’s college basketball comes, who is going to fill the shoes of the above roster of coaching luminaries?
At the start of the prior decade, youthful coaching prodigies Brad Stevens and Shaka Smart produced Final Four runs from the unlikely locales of Butler (two) and VCU, respectively. As a result, they became the names associated with, seemingly, all the coveted college coaching positions.
Ultimately, Stevens, 44, detoured his career path to the NBA’s Boston Celtics. Smart, 43, kept turning down chances to move until he found what was perceived to be an ideal situation at Texas — where he has had so-so success so far.
In the current decade, there are no rising coaches in men’s college hoops who have attained the Stevens/Smart level of luster.
Even among the hoops blue bloods, that is a greater problem for some schools than others.
North Carolina’s tradition is to mine its own “hoops family” for its head coaches.
If that practice holds once Williams retires, the most prominent current coaching names with direct ties to Tar Heels basketball include: Stanford Coach Jerod Haase, a former UNC assistant; UNC Greensboro Coach Wes Miller, a former North Carolina guard; Monmouth Coach King Rice, another ex-Tar Heels guard; and current UNC assistant Hubert Davis, once a UNC star.
It is the prevailing thought that Duke will stay within the Krzyzewski coaching tree once Coach K exits.
If that is true, former Duke players Tommy Amaker (Harvard), Jeff Capel (Pittsburgh), Chris Collins (Northwestern), Johnny Dawkins (Central Florida), Bobby Hurley (Arizona State), Quin Snyder (Utah Jazz) and Steve Wojociechowski (Marquette) will form the Blue Devils candidate pool.
(Former Duke assistant Mike Bray of Notre Dame is 61. My presumption is Duke will want a younger option to replace Krzyzewski).
Conversely, Kentucky’s modern hiring history has mostly featured selecting the most accomplished candidate the school can attract regardless of any previous ties.
Some regard Texas Tech’s Chris Beard, 47, as the top candidate to move into the next blue-blood coaching vacancy. It’s hard to envision a Bobby Knight disciple on the Kentucky bench, however.
Ohio State’s Chris Holtmann, 49, a Jessamine County product, would be the most logical candidate if the Kentucky job opened soon. It’s unclear, however, whether Holtmann would want to give up the very good job he now has to come home and assume the UK pressure cooker.
Among coaches with direct ties to UK, BYU head man Mark Pope, 48, is off to an impressive start to his head coaching career. However, the former Wildcats center needs some NCAA Tournament success (his 2019-20 team would have made the tourney, had there been one) to be worthy even of consideration to coach Kentucky.
The stock of former UK assistant Kenny Payne, 54, has been enhanced because the Cats have endured a competitive collapse this winter, the first season after Payne left Calipari’s staff to become a New York Knicks assistant. But in the 21st century, could you hire someone with no head coaching experience to run a program the magnitude of UK’s?
As for the status of Kentucky’s current coach, Calipari’s most-recent contract extended his coaching tenure through the 2028-29 season. Starting at the end of the 2023-24 campaign, Calipari has the right to opt out of coaching the Wildcats to become a fundraiser/goodwill ambassador for UK.
Even as poorly as the Cats’ 2020-21 season has gone — and 5-13 is unthinkably bad for Kentucky — it would benefit UK immensely if Calipari could get the Wildcats’ ship righted in the next few seasons to allow time for an obvious successor to the Big Blue throne to emerge.
