2024 Roster (Enter Antonio Reeves & Tre Mitchell)

[Lighthouse]

I have to say I have always enjoyed every season, especially the Rupp, Hall, Pitino, Tubby and early Cal seasons. Kentucky basketball was fun and exciting and we were a force to reckon with. Now, it's hard to get excited with all the guessing who will finally be on the team. Will the guy who shot the lights out last season be able to hit the backboard here. The last few seasons, I was cautiously excited only to be let down again, and it's getting old.

[Catsrock]

I’d love to know what happened to Calipari and the power brokers of the sport. When Kenny Payne went to the Knicks I thought that was something of a sign that “we were still close” with the William Wesley’s of the sport, but it’s clear that isn’t the case at least like it used to be.

Cal miffed Phil Knight when we didn’t play in his tourney. But what else happened?

Primarily NIL I suppose. What good is a $100,000 under the table handshake from WWW if Bezos can hand you $1,000,000 above the table?

Anyone with $ can be a player.

[Joneslab]

Yeah, the NIL was at first thought to be a huge boon for Kentucky.

In actuality what's happened is that it's flattened the landscape out even more than it would've otherwise been and Kentucky hasn't really been a thunderous force using it.

[DA#23]

We lost rights to the Zion Williamson's of the landscape before NIL came along, though. Still recruiting well but no longer landing the truly elite guys that were probably coming here a few years earlier.

Regarding NIL, sure, anyone can put out For Hire sign with a portfolio of "ahem" guaranteed earnings and nab a big recruit. Just imagine what UL could have offered Brian Bowen now. It's lessened the importance of program, facilities, university, and for some...probably coach as well.

[Joneslab]

Yeah the landscape has been flattening for awhile. Cal hasn't adjusted well by and large. (With some exceptions.)

Back when he was starting the experiment at Memphis he was unapologetic about getting into the one-and-done game. He packaged it as curing generational poverty, a theme he's still going with as recently as last week.

There was a time when going after those players was Jerry Tarkanian level cringe. Cal threw that out the window...and then by the early 2010's or so the college basketball world was all going in on those same players. Much harder to recruit when everybody is honing in on the four or five players you covet in a class. Instead of coming up with some clever pitch, or changing the direction of the program, he just doubled down. It hasn't served him that well.

He's also been a little slow on the uptake with NIL, but it's hard to say whether that's because of UK or something Cal is specifically doing (or not doing). He'd say it comes back to "facilities" and that may be partly true, but I doubt it's completely true.

[Lighthouse]

I remember the later years of Tubby when he lost players because of how he coached. I wonder if that's happening now?

[Joneslab]

It's interesting how many former players Cal has had on social media recently.

I have to think that's not by accident. I imagine he's trying to sell something about his relationship to his players. Maybe has to do with Bradshaw and attempting to reach his family.

[DA#23]

It's interesting how many former players Cal has had on social media recently.

Reminding recruits (and their associates) about the number of Max contracts is what he's doing. It's part of his media attack right now, and from the Dan Patrick interview:

"You talk about name, imagine and likeness.. I don't like to get into that with players because you don't come to #Kentucky, I call that tripping over nickels to try to get to an #NBA max contract. We probably have 12-13 guys right now that have max deals" -John Calipari on NIL​

[Joneslab]

Keshad Johnson, the San Diego St. transfer, will visit Kentucky this week.

[Catsrock]

Here’s top of Rivals board 2006. Looks like the top guys have always been recruited. Cal just drastically changed what qualified a guy to be one and done. Orton plays 4 minutes and averages half a point—“get on out of here big fella!”

My point—I never understood why people say coaches used to avoid the one and dones.

[Joneslab]

Yeah, you’re right about Cal expanding the definition.

Still, back then in the early days after the straight-to-the-NBA rule was changed you absolutely didn’t see everybody and his mother after those players. Of course back then the players didn’t openly advertise themselves as one-and-dones.

I think more than anything that’s what Cal tried to do: remove the stigma of what the whole thing meant. A lot of UK fans, including muse, were for that. The problem as we’ve all noted is that he stopped getting enough of those players and we continue to turn the roster over.

[Catsrock]

There may have been select few schools/coaches who felt they had a shot at the very top guys. But there was never a year when no one wanted the best players. I just pulled 2006 out of a hat because it was before Cal was here. Can go back and look at the school list of every player in the rivals 150 for every year.

I started really following recruiting in 2007–the Beasley, Mayo, Rose, Love year. All highly sought after players.

Thank heavens Clyde pulled PPatt out of that crew. James Harden may have been the lesser known diamond in the rough. But that’s another discussion. My point is schools were fighting for the top guys

LeBron James himself had 7 offers and no one thought he was going to school

1st player Cal wouldn’t allow to come back for sophomore year—Dajuan Wagner—class of 2001. Next 3 guys on big board went straight to NBA. Dajuan was recruited by everyone and considered UK, UL, Miami and UConn before going to Memphis.

[Joneslab]

There may have been select few schools/coaches who felt they had a shot at the very top guys.

I think it was more that, for the longest time, programs didn't really want to be associated with that. I mean people did everything short of calling Dontonio Wingfield a thug.

There's *still* a stigma, all these years later. This is not going to be popular but it has to do with young black men getting rich. I'm not going to say it's "racist," but it is at least race-adjacent.

It also has to do with the idea that players like that are mercenaries. How many times have we heard that at UK? That mentality from fans (and likely school administrators and boosters) was rampant in the early days of this. Cal demystified it.

Doesn't mean that nobody was recruiting those guys, just that it was relegated to schools (like Memphis) who didn't shy away from the potential fallout of having those players. Or like North Carolina used to pride themselves on: they'd go after one guy who might go pro but the other guys were "Carolina boys."

It didn't take long for that mindset to change but there was a window there that Cal exploited. A decade later (or less) you could look around at players like Zion Williamson and the entirety of college basketball is after him knowing he's going to play a year. It's not kosher to say this around these parts because Cal sucks to most of us now, but Cal had a lot to do with making that acceptable. Like everything else in life there are good things and bad things about it. I actually commend Cal for how he talks about poverty and so on...but it's a massive double-edged sword for UK fans, as we all know.

All I'm saying with this whole rant is: the landscape changed, Cal didn't, and I think that more than anything is why we are in the state we're in. He's missed on some hugely important players and the programs who got those players from us weren't even movers on the main stage two decades ago in terms of recruits of that echelon.

[Catsrock]

I just reject the idea that there was a time in history that the best players in the game were not widely recruited. And it was not outlier schools like Memphis. The outlier was Coach K who wanted great players as long as they were privileged white pricks or sons of already wealthy blacks. Again a visit to the rivals annuls show the top guys were going a little bit of everywhere all along.

But what Cal changed more than anything was he didn’t try to keep them in the program. It took just a few years of him getting everyone he wanted for Mike K to change his ways if he still wanted top guys. Thus the explosion in the one and done phenomenon. No longer was it the best 2 or 3 players in the class but a ton of them every year.

And yeah, I’ve recently posted Cal has been the most influential player in what college basketball has morphed into. And it’s effect on our program has not been great. Furthermore—I’ve recently reiterated the absurdity of Cal acting like he’s the reason John Wall and Anthony Davis are wealthy.

[Joneslab]

^ Well remember, when Cal first started it was the LeBron James era. I think it was still understood at that time you'd have a handful of guys who would simply never play in college. The rest likely would and because jumping to the NBA was so rare for young guys, they'd probably be there awhile. There were only 2 freshmen taken in the very early days of "one-and-dones." By 2015 it was something like 18.

That's the window I'm talking about. i think Cal tried to corner the block on players who were unashamed of being called one-and-dones. He's still up to that. You make a good point about *how* he's done it, by basically not trying to keep them in school, but I think the players themselves began to be open about their desires for college basketball and that allowed Cal to sweep in and mine that ground for players who many schools were gunshy about taking because they weren't "real" students.

That Kansas St. team you mentioned was probably as instrumental as Cal in breaking the stigma and opening the floodgates to what you see today. What I recall about that team is that they got a lot of criticism for what they were, what they represented about the future of the game, and how they put the team together. You see several programs who are not shy at all trying to do that today.