Mitch Barnhart says John Calipari Will Figure Out How To Put Competitive Roster Together

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UK AD Mitch Barnhart, left, says he knows the "pulse" of what is going on with the basketball team. (UK Athletics Photo)

Kentucky basketball coach John Calipari and UK athletics director Mitch Barnhart are not big buddies even though Barnhart is Calipari’s boss.

Remember the “basketball school-football school” fiasco last summer and Calipari has not been happy with Barnhart’s reluctance to commit funding for a new basketball facility.

Many Kentucky fans are not happy with Calipari over having just one NCAA Tournament win the last three years and currently having only seven scholarship players, including five freshmen, on the 2023-24 roster.

Barnhart is at the SEC Spring Meeting in Florida and supported Calipari in a one-on-one interview with Cats’ Pause publisher Darrell Bird Thursday.

“We’ve had a lot of times when our roster has been fluid and he’s really good at figuring how to put together rosters,” Barnhart told Bird. “We have five newcomers coming in, some folks coming back and then we’ll fill in around that. He is really good at that.”

Actually, Kentucky has just two players currently returning — Adou Thiero and Ego Onyenso. Neither played a lot last year.

“People say, ‘Are you concerned?’ I get concerned about every sport every year,” Barnhart said to Bird. “I absolutely see exactly what’s going on.

“We’re in conversation a lot and I know the pulse of what he has going on with his team. I feel confident. He’s a great basketball coach who will find a way to put a team on the court that competes at a really high level.”

Not sure from all I have heard how often Barnhart and Calipari converse but Kentucky fans hope Barnhart is right about a team that “competes at a really high level” because it has not been that way the last three postseasons for Kentucky.

6 Responses

    1. Cal’s winning percentage the past 3 seasons mirrors BCG’s with a lot more talent.
      And BCG was drunk.

  1. UK should never be in a position of having to "fill" a roster. Rosters are built and sustained by properly focused recruiting. If UK is truly the gold standard, good players will drool at the chance to be a part of that roster and compete to earn playing time and contribute to the team’s success rather than the players-first mentality that drives players to only focus on "what’s in it for me!!!" with either NIL $$$$, promises of playing time, or the privilege to add UK to a resume on the way to the NBA, even without playing a single second in a single game.

    This week, Calipari said, "We want players who want this culture, who care about winning, understand what it means to play at Kentucky – both how hard and how rewarding it is …" What exactly is this "culture" that this fraud talks about when he doesn’t regard winning as essential in his role as UK’s head coach.

    He also has said many times that the UK program was the gold standard, but it is hard to imagine how anyone, even the staunchest Calipari defender, can argue that UK is the gold standard today.

    If UK is indeed the gold standard, that is so different from other places that are NOT the gold standard, then players would line up to have the opportunity to have a place on the UK roster, to experience that unique culture, and to be a part of teams that leave their marks in a postive way on the UK record books. However, this program is far removed from those charactistics. Just look at this current off season that has seen Sahvir Wheeler (Washington), CJ Fredrick (Cincinnati), Daimion Collins (LSU) or Lance Ware (Villanova) all decide that they would rather play next year anywhere other than UK under Calipari. Furthermore, as of today, it appears that Reeves has reached a similar conclusion.

    The fact is that these good players view the UK program as no better than, if even equal to Cincinnati, LSU, Washington, or Villanova. Over the last decade, the road away from the UK program has been traveled so frequently that the department of transportation has given it a new route designation, Ex-UKBB-Express Lane, and many one time UK players have traveled on that road.

    What a disgrace for the once great UK basketball program, the one time gold standard of college basketball.

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