I generally think Cal isn’t going to fail wherever he goes, but my opinion of whether I think May is a good hire is not dependent on my opinion of various other hypothetical hires.
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Shaka Smart, Marquette head coach: It was made perfectly clear by Smart’s reps that he wasn’t interested in some prominent openings earlier in this cycle, but none of those jobs were Kentucky. The easy argument against this is that Smart already lived the life of a major, state school, hyper-high profile job, and it didn’t work out. But Texas and Kentucky are not remotely similar jobs. Kentucky is a basketball school — maybe the basketball school — and is the equivalent of Marquette on all available steroids. We wonder if Smart would have interest in turning his life upside down in the most dramatic way possible, but wouldn’t he at least have to answer the call, if it comes?
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It’s been 30 years since Arkansas won it all and 29 since they’ve been to a final four and a title game. Muss got them close.
If Calipari is taking all of his recruits there, I imagine they, along with Duke, will be the favorites next season. But that’s nothing new for a Cal team.
Kentucky should experience at least a little dip.
Kentucky is one of the few schools with the ability, mostly, to name their coach.
I think Underwood would be an A+ fantastic hire, but wdik
I cannot imagine Kentucky’s entire recruiting class is just going to follow him to Arkansas.
Not every one, but he is the pull for them without a doubt.
Read through a ton of this just to see a couple hit on this point in the last few comments, but yea man I wasn’t really dying to see Cal here. He objectively would have had worse players at UM than he did at UK. There’s a patience needed at this job for developing good not great recruits over time while bringing in a more limited pool of transfers than you’ll have access to anywhere else. Cal has made it his persona to get kids to the league as fast as possible, which personally I find somewhat commendable. I also get why UK fans ran out of patience for it, particularly when things kind of became a mess with his in game coaching. I can’t see how it all wouldn’t be the same as what he just did at UK but a worse version. Which to be fair is better than 8-24 but long term Michigan should aim for more.
On the flip side… which coach who is comfortably meeting and exceeding expectations at a second tier job is trying to step into the hellscape that is coaching in Lexington? About to see one of these guys age like a president.
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Maybe some slippage, but I’d be pretty shocked if the majority didn’t follow him? Why would that be surprising?
I didn’t say it would be surprising if any of them followed him, I said it would be surprising if the entire class followed him.
Perry seems like the one most likely to stay just because he’s a Kentucky kid.
I wouldn’t be surprised if the four top-30 guys followed at all though.
I would put the O/U somewhere around 3. I’d bet at least 1 kid from that class ends up heading somewhere other than Kentucky or Arkansas because it will be open season for NIL offers from around the country to entice them.
I think 4 follow him bare minimum
Cal is the NBA whisperer in the mind of many kids, so I think he’ll have the bulk of his class follow. Plus, if the “NIL” incentives are going to be higher, that helps even more.
Yeah, you commit to Cal not Kentucky. And you don’t pay Cal $8 mil or whatever and then not back him with NIL.
I guess my question is does Cal just stick to the same “all in on five-stars” script, or does he go more aggressively in the portal with a fresh start.
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I’m assuming Kentucky has assurances from donors their new coach will have even more NIL than Cal is getting at Arkansas.
I will be interested to see how elite cal recruits at Arkansas. Uk is obviously a special national brand that recruits well on its own while Arkansas is a good regional brand. Cal was a great recruiter at Memphis but it was mostly regional based with some key national wins like rose and Evans, he wasn’t really getting all the best players from across the country. However, him not be able to recruit as well he did at uk may be a good thing.
I would tend to think that the amount of money given to the UK program is pretty immune to peaks and valleys
Kentucky writers this week have said their NIL money dried up because they were fed up with Cal.
Uk has an insane fan base but they don’t have the super billionaire booster types. Much easier to get a few billionaires types to fund a 5mil+ nil payroll like cal will at Arkansas than to get a bunch of regular fans and millionaire types to do it.
