John Calipari takes aim at eclipsing UCLA’s 11 national titles
Before he’s finished coaching Kentucky, John Calipari has a lofty goal he wants to reach.
“Our next challenge is to chase UCLA’s 11 titles,” he wrote on his website Monday.
UCLA is the only college basketball program with more national championships than Kentucky. Calipari led the Wildcats to their eighth title in 2012 behind Anthony Davis and Michael Kidd-Gilchrist, but they still need three more championships just to tie the Bruins and four to overtake them.
“This could take more than a decade, but so what? Let’s chase it,” Calipari wrote. “Can we do it? Sure, but it’s going to be really tough. The tournament isn’t a best-of-seven series and the best team doesn’t always win the title. The trick is to always be one of those teams at the end of the season that’s right there. That’s the first step.”
Kentucky has won only won championship during Calipari’s seven-year tenure, but it has consistently been a title contender thanks to his ability to land a bevy of top prospects every year and consistently mold them into a cohesive team. The Wildcats have advanced to the Final Four four times under Calipari and have won an average of 31 games per year during his tenure.
Of course, the only way Kentucky can have realistic hope of surpassing UCLA under Calipari is if he remains in Lexington for many years to come. Calipari says he’s in it for the long haul despite annual speculation that he could leave for an NBA gig if offered a lucrative contract and player-personnel control.
“My plan is to coach here for the rest of my career,” the 57-year-old Calipari wrote. “I want this to be my final coaching position.”
One of Calipari’s other goals for the future at Kentucky is to improve the environment at venerable Rupp Arena so that it becomes “the preeminent home-court advantage in basketball.” Calipari says he does not know if Kentucky will break ground on a new arena during his tenure, but in the meantime he wants to make games at Rupp have a big-event feel.
“Since I’ve gotten here, little has changed in the game-day atmosphere of that historical gym,” Calipari wrote. “We have the best fans in the country and they give us an incredible advantage each game, but like anything else, we constantly need to be thinking about what’s next and how can we continue to be the best.”
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Jeff Eisenberg is the editor of The Dagger on Yahoo Sports. Have a tip? Email him at [email protected] or follow him on Twitter!
