Despite another early exit from the NCAA tournament, Kentucky men’s basketball coach John Calipari will return for his 16th season in 2024-25, according to athletic director Mitch Barnhart.
Calipari’s future seemed cloudy following the Wildcats’ first-round loss to Oakland, a 14-seed, in the NCAA tournament last week. It was the latest upset on the program’s résumé; two years ago, Kentucky was a 2-seed when it lost to 15-seed Saint Peter’s in the opening round of the 2022 tournament.
Calipari, speaking Monday on his season-ending radio show, said he understood that the standard at Kentucky — the winningest program in men’s college basketball history and an eight-time national champion — is to cut down the nets in the final game of the year, and acknowledged that his team had fallen short of that goal.
“I talked again about the standard … that I believe in, that I think we can do,” Calipari said. “But that standard of national titles has been here from Coach [Adolph] Rupp on, and the only thing I’m saying to all our fans is you know I’m going to work — work in our state, work on this program, this university. … That’s my commitment. I’m not changing, 24/7, let’s go — whether it’s recruiting, all the stuff that we have to do.”
Calipari has one national title (2012) and his most recent Final Four appearance was in 2015. The past few years had been rough for the Wildcats’ devoted fans, as Kentucky finished 9-16 in 2020-21, the program’s worst record in 100 years, and suffered early postseason exits in 2022 and 2023.