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Posted by catmandoo (Member # 1284) on 11-07-2016, 12:58 PM:

As John Calipari explained it, he became a transformational figure in college basketball by mere happenstance. One epiphany followed another until — poof! — Kentucky was blazing a trail.

“Organic” is what Calipari calls the process that led him to re-invent Kentucky basketball on a foundation of freshmen. By now, the merry-go-round is familiar: Calipari starts anew and meshes an effective unit out of alpha individuals; Kentucky contends for a national championship; many of those players enter the next spring’s NBA Draft; the process repeats itself the next year.

Before arriving at UK in 2009, Calipari had experience with so-called one-and-done players at Memphis: most notably Derrick Rose and Tyreke Evans. He expected his first star freshman at UK, John Wall, to follow that example.

Of course, Wall did play one college season. The surprise was that three other freshmen — DeMarcus Cousins, Eric Bledsoe and Daniel Orton — did the same. Junior Patrick Patterson, who only played for Calipari in that 2009-10 season, also entered the draft.

“I started thinking, ‘Oh my gosh, what just happened?’” Calipari said.

At that draft, he watched player after player, family after family, realize their basketball dreams. Perhaps flushed with this supernova of success, he memorably called it “the biggest day in the history of Kentucky’s program.”

Recalling his controversial comment that night in New York City, Calipari subtly amended that statement. “When I said it was one of the biggest moments in the history of the program and everybody got mad, they look back now and say, ‘Well, he’s probably right,’” he said.

Any doubts about this Blue-print for basketball success disappeared when the second one-and-done Kentucky team advanced to the 2011 Final Four.

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