One Shining Moment 2012 HD

Everything you will read below by Dan Wetzel is true, but it all started when Derrick Rose was taken first in the NBA draft after spending one year under Calipari at Memphis.

John Calipari stuggled to recruit top players to Memphis the first 4 years he was there because the “one and done” rule had not been put into place yet and many of the talented recruits of his skipped college and went straight to the NBA. Then everything changed.

Memphis reaped the benefits of the talented recruits Calipari brought to Memphis. In 2008 Derrick Rose led Memphis to the NCAA finals and he was chosen first in the NBA draft. This is where his recruiting really took off and Jerry Meyer called the Memphis Tiger 2009 class “arguably the best recruiting class ever.”

Of course, Calipari left Memphis took several of that great class with him to Kentucky (through a loophole in the rules and that loophole was later closed with the “Calipari rule”.)

Calipari gets victory over Self and revenge for 2008 loss to Kansas when he had Derrick Rose. Below is 2008 version of “One Shining Moment”

Kentucky’s John Calipari has built a 21st century program that’s destined for more success

By Dan Wetzel, Yahoo! Sports 4 hours, 39 minutes ago

NEW ORLEANS – Anthony Davis was charging right into the still delirious Kentucky section of the Superdome, where friends and family sit, after the Wildcats’ 67-59 victory over Kansas in the national title game. He was searching for his family. First he found the program’s friends.

He came across William Wesley, the basketball power broker who’s befriended stars from Michael Jordan to LeBron James. The two locked in a long embrace, rocking back and forth in celebration. When Worldwide Wes let go, Davis moved on to Lynn Merritt, Nike Basketball’s senior director and a man of immense influence in the game.

Later in the locker room, Davis and the rest of the Wildcats would hug it out with Phil Knight, the Nike founder and freshly minted Hall of Famer who was wearing the same “No 1 Greater” championship hat they were. Soon Knight and Wes were locked in joy themselves.

John Calipari’s Kentucky program isn’t just No. 1 in the country. It’s the hottest program since UCLA used to win it all every year.
(Getty Images)

Ashley Judd was at the Superdome cheering. Jay-Z came to the game Saturday. Drake is a regular. LeBron once even attended a game in Lexington and when the cheerleaders spelled out K-E-N-T-U-C-K-Y, he was the “Y.”

John Calipari’s program isn’t just the hottest in the country after it captured its eighth NCAA title and Cal spoke boldly about placing six of his players (three of them freshmen) in the first round of June’s NBA draft.

It’s the hottest program since UCLA used to win everything every single year.

And so here’s the worst nightmare for everyone who had to swallow hard to accept the vision of Calipari and his band of pro prospects having their One (and Done) Shining Moment:

There’s no reason to think that UK can’t repeat next year … with an almost entirely new team.

[ Related: Kentucky holds off Kansas to capture national title ]

“Right now I’m going to have two days and then I’ve got to go out recruiting Friday,” Calipari said of his plans to enjoy his first title.

His top three targets are Las Vegas’ Shabazz Muhammad, the No. 1-ranked recruit in America, Nerlens Noel, an Anthony Davis-like 6-10 star out of Massachusetts that Rivals.com has as the third-best player, and Anthony Bennett, the seventh-ranked recruit who’s also from Vegas.

Multiple sources think Kentucky has a tremendous chance at all three players, and this Final Four infomercial didn’t hurt. If so, you add them to three other top-40 recruits who have already signed and, well, here comes Kentucky.

Again. Like, back-in-the-Final-Four-in-Atlanta-level again.

Calipari spent much of his postgame press conference doing what he does best, trying to deflect credit to his players while focusing just about every single word he says to the open ears of top high school talent, their families and the inner circles that control the recruiting process.

[ Photos: Kentucky celebrates winning eighth national title ]

Calipari is destroying the conventional wisdom that you can’t build a “program” with players who leave campus after just a few months. It may not be your traditional definition of a program, but it is at least a “system” that showcases talent, prepares them not just to be drafted but to succeed in the NBA and, now with this trophy as proof, win championships.

“I told them I wanted this to be one for the ages,” Calipari said. “It doesn’t matter how young you are, it’s how you play together.”

This 38-victory season has been the final breakthrough for Calipari. The great players already believed in him, but now with these clipped nets he can sell it all.

“I said a couple years ago, and everybody got crazy, [that] when we had five guys drafted in the [2010] first round [that] this is one of the biggest moments, if not the biggest, in Kentucky history,” Calipari said Monday night. “The reason was, I knew now other kids would look and say, ‘You’ve got to go there.’ ”

[ Pat Forde: Stars playing without ego help Kentucky set a new standard for dominance ]

And they came. First last year, when UK got to the Final Four. And now for this one, when they closed it out.

Now this year’s players will all go, the whole thing will be gone in an instant.

Kentucky will have many new faces next season but it’s success shouldn’t change.
(Getty Images)

And that’s how the coach wants it. Calipari may be the most honest coach in the country when it comes to navigating the NBA’s age minimum that forces the best players to campus for at least one year. At no moment does he pretend that getting to the NBA isn’t the primary goal of each and every member of his team.

So he’s worked and worked and worked to create a place where the players come first, where a coach will risk the wrath of fans and snark of his coaching peers by declaring draft night as bigger than winning championships. And then he figured out how to coach them to the ultimate success.

“You’ve got to recruit them so they know you’re trustworthy,” Calipari said. “And they’ve got to trust that you’re doing it for them; [that] it’s not about me. Then they’ll do what you ask them to do because it’s for them. I’m not doing it for me.”

Well, of course he’s doing it for himself. And for Kentucky. And for the salary. And all the rest. The players can accept that deal, though. So can the power brokers, because it’s clear this different kind of “program” is working.

Recruiting is an ugly business, but it’s also the reality of this business. Everyone is chasing the same stars. Everyone goes after the same guys. Just about everyone walks the same line. In the end, it’s still about where players and their people feel they’ll succeed.

You give John Calipari and Kentucky a chance with a great prospect and he not only doesn’t screw him up, he returns a player prepared for the NBA. He coached two of the last three rookies of the year. And Anthony Davis looks pretty ready for 2012-13.

The old establishment of this sport may hate it, but to most high school stars there isn’t a more tantalizing image than Davis celebrating a national title with kingmakers such as Phil Knight, Lynn Merritt and World Wide Wes.

Maybe once this game was about a four-year star such as Shane Battier and his coach, Mike Krzyzewski, sharing a long-worked-for moment of mutual respect and love.

That was then. This is now. And this is Kentucky.

Deal with it. As long as Calipari doesn’t follow his players back to the NBA, he’s sitting on a juggernaut that could redefine what’s possible in the modern era.

Calipari hopes he loses his top six players to the NBA draft.

“That’s why I’ve got to go recruiting,” Calipari said.

See you in Atlanta next April.

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#1 Kansas vs #1 Memphis National Championship 2008 (Part 3)

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New Orleans, La. — Bill Self’s start in coaching is probably well known by now. A guard on the Oklahoma State basketball team, he worked at a Kansas basketball camp one summer led by then-coach Larry Brown. He suffered an injury in a counselor’s scrimmage and feeling bad, Brown told Self to ask him if he ever needed anything.

Self wanted to coach, and there was an opening on Brown’s staff. A young coach by the name of John Vincent Calipari just left to become an assistant at Pittsburgh.

Photo by Chris Neal

Kentucky’s Head Coach John Calipari takes the ball away from Doron Lamb during Saturday night’s semi-final game against Louisville.

A few years prior, Kansas coach Ted Owens offered Calipari the chance to volunteer with the team. He lived with an assistant coach, served food to campers at Jayhawker Towers and survived on those meals after the campers had made their rounds. He even met his wife at Kansas and says he has great memories of Lawrence.

Both coaches can trace their humble beginnings back to 1651 Naismith Drive, but the roads taken since then have seemed so different.

Self methodically climbed up the college coaching ladder while Calipari sandwiched a stint in the NBA between head coaching jobs at mid-majors. He recruited well at Memphis and has gotten even better at Kentucky. Self called him the best salesman in the sport.

Now their paths cross in the National Championship again, fours years after one of the greatest championship games of all time.

“I said after they beat us in 2008, if there was going to be any coach or school that was going to beat us in that venue,” Calipari said Sunday. “I would have said, let it be Kansas.”

He hasn’t seen the tape of that game, though. Its shattered remains were left on the side of the road after being hurled out of the Memphis bus on the way to the San Antonio airport. Self, on the other hand, once watched the game 50 straight days while working out.

Four seasons later, Calipari’s Wildcats are the best team in the land. Self leads a squad that wasn’t supposed to be playing in April this season and Kentucky is favored by more than a few buckets.

“If we play like we did last night in the first half,” Self said Sunday of his semifinal victory over Ohio State. “It probably won’t be a good deal for us.”

The Jayhawks have lived on the edge the last month with a rotation of seven upperclassmen.

Kentucky has dominated college basketball since November with some of the best underclassmen in years. Some have thought they could compete with an NBA team and the Kentucky players said they believed they were this good since the beginning of the season.

Self and Calipari’s roads from Lawrence to New Orleans were anything but similar. But here they are, two completely different storylines playing out at the two winningest schools of all time.

“I think it’s going to be special,” Self said. “The bluest of blue bloods.”

— Edited by Pat Strathman

#1 Kansas vs #1 Memphis National Championship 2008 (Part 4)

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Memphis Tigers John Calipari Interview 2008 Basketball Final

NEW ORLEANS

There is an inherent silliness to a profession like the one that has made rich men of John Calipari and Bill Self. They spend months, even years, burning thousands of gallons of jet fuel and begging teenagers to come play for them, even if it’s just for 35 college games.

And if you’re good enough at that particular skill, you earn the label of “recruiter,” which seems like a compliment most of the time but turns into a pejorative the first time those kids you recruited lose an NCAA tournament game they were supposed to win. Then we come back every subsequent March talking about legacies and trying to distinguish between the “recruiters” and the “coaches,” as though they were two separate entities that have nothing to do with each other.

Self and Calipari are not the only college basketball coaches who’ve been pigeonholed that way for most of their careers, but they happen to be the two coaches who will go head-to-head tonight at the Superdome for the national championship.

The fact that it’s these two again is ironic, because nobody’s postseason failures have been as scrutinized or chronicled as the ones Self and Calipari have experienced. Calipari has had good enough teams at Kentucky and Memphis to win three or four championships by now but arrives at tonight’s game stuck on zero, trying to cut down the nets for the first time. Self already has his title — at Calipari’s expense in 2008 — but his legacy is still heavily influenced by four stunning upsets his Kansas teams have suffered in the NCAA tournament.

But this year should bury the perception — or even hint of a perception — that Calipari and Self are more recruiters than coaches. Because regardless of the outcome tonight, the fact that they’re coaching a championship game against each other for the second time in five years is a testament to how these two have separated themselves at the top of the profession.

Whatever you think coaching college basketball is about, whatever box you want to put them in, nobody is doing it better than Calipari and Self, and the gap between them and the rest of the field is suddenly getting pretty wide.

“The one thing about Cal that goes unnoticed a little bit, though not in coaching circle, is he recruits and coaches good players and gets them to buy in and do it his way,” Self said. “They’re unselfish and they guard, and that’s the sign of a guy who can coach. He’s a unique guy, and I mean that in a favorable way.”

ACTION GALLERY

The action was frantic as four teams battled Saturday to reach the title game at the NCAA Final Four.

“He’s done a phenomenal job,” Calipari said. “He’s another one that gets guys to buy in to how they have to play to win, and they listen to him.”

Calipari and Self are not close friends. In fact, they’ve recruited enough of the same players over the years — often under heated circumstances — that there’s even a little bit of animosity bubbling under the surface.

But they have quite a bit in common, starting with the common perception that they are excellent recruits and mediocre coaches. At the 2008 Final Four, which also featured North Carolina’s Roy Williams and UCLA’s Ben Howland, Self and Calipari were regarded as the lightweights.

The evidence, though, no longer supports that notion. Because regardless of who they’ve had on their teams, no matter how many players have left early for the NBA, Calipari and Self are operating at a pace that seems almost impossible in an era where rosters change so much from year to year.

In his last seven seasons (three at Kentucky, four at Memphis), Calipari is 238-28 with three Final Four trips and three Elite Eight appearances. Over the past eight seasons, Self is 245-43 with a national championship, eight straight Big 12 regular season titles and four No. 1 seeds in the NCAA tournament. He was also named Naismith coach of the year yesterday.

In that span of time, North Carolina, Syracuse, UConn, Kentucky (under Billy Gillispie), Arizona, Florida, Louisville, Ohio State and other great programs have all missed the NCAA tournament for one reason or another. In this era, with so many players deciding to leave early and teams having to rebuild on the fly, it’s not that hard for a season here or there to get away from even the best coaches.

But Calipari and Self have been immune to any dropoffs. And regardless of how many times they win the crapshoot that is the NCAA tournament, the fact that they’ve had chances every single year is an otherworldly accomplishment. 

“I’ve always thought the most important thing were those transition years,” Self said. “If you’re like us and you had really good players, you position yourself maybe for a year or two to make a run, then you retool it and maybe make a run again. We’ve been so fortunate to be in the game every year. Coaching where we coach, the pride that exists there, it doesn’t matter what the rosters or the faces look like. The expectations don’t change.”

That doesn’t happen if all you are is a good recruiter. Because the reality is, for all the hype about recruiting rankings and McDonald’s All-Americans, a lot of times players don’t work out. Or they don’t develop as quickly as hoped. Or in the case of Josh Selby, who left Kansas after just one year, they don’t fit in and barely make an impact before going to the NBA.

Kansas lost four starters from last season’s team, which got stunned by VCU in the Elite Eight, and three of its recruits failed to qualify academically. Now it’s one win from a national championship. Calipari has turned over the bulk of his team every season at Kentucky, which means new chemistry and new personalities to manage. Now it’s 40 minutes from all coming together.

“He’s raised the bar in some ways about how hard you have to get after it because it’s been proven he’s going to get guys,” Self said. “If you’re going to compete with him, you have to have those same type of guys. Certainly in the three years he’s been at Kentucky and even before that at Memphis, nobody has recruited like he has and nobody has coached his guys like he has.”

They are slightly different formulas, the ones that have landed Kentucky and Kansas here. And maybe this game will validate one of them. For Calipari, maybe it will solidify his legacy. For Self, a second title would put him alongside some of the best ever.

But hopefully the idea that they’re nothing more than recruiters will be buried in New Orleans tonight. They wouldn’t have gotten here again if that were true. What Self and Calipari have done is what college basketball coaching is about. Tonight’s championship is a testament to the fact nobody is doing it better.

Kansas vs. Memphis – 2008 NCAA Title Game Highlights (HD)

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