John Calipari on UMass tenure: ‘We did it right’
The University of Massachusetts is honoring former men’s basketball coach John Calipari with a pair of events in the state this week.
Tuesday night, Boston’s Colonnade Hotel hosts “An Evening with Naismith Basketball Hall of Famer John Calipari.’’ Calipari will be honored at an event in Amherst Wednesday. The premise of both events? To celebrate Calipari’s on-court success as coach of the Minutemen in the mid-90’s. In 1996, a UMass team led by Marcus Camby made it to the Final Four, losing to eventual national champion Kentucky.
That’s the good, but there’s also some bad that comes with Calipari’s UMass legacy, stains highlighted in a recent column by The Boston Globe’s Dan Shaughnessy. The school was forced to vacate that Final Four and was fined $151,000 after the NCAA discovered that Camby had already turned professional while still at UMass. Camby had agents and took cash, jewerly, and the services of prostitutes. Calipari got out before the school was punished, signing a $15 million contract to coach the NBA’s New Jersey Nets.
Twenty years later, UMass is choosing to honor the good stuff and ignore the bad, something Shaughnessy takes issue with. He writes:
What an embarrassment for our state university. You’d think our UMass officials would have as much good sense as the president of the University of Memphis, who canceled a Cal celebration after initially thinking it would be a good idea to honor college basketball’s all-time bag man. Not our guys. Not here in the Hub of the Universe, and the great Commonwealth of Massachusetts. Our guys are going full steam ahead with the two-day event to honor a man who oversaw a program that broke rules and treated academics as an afterthought.
Calipari was asked about the column Tuesday on WEEI’s Dennis & Callahan show.
“Look, this is a time to celebrate an era of basketball,’’ said Calipari. “I am not worried about what somebody thinks. None of those guys feel our joy. You look at what we were able to do and the the kids and the graduation rates, the wins and exciting the campus.
“We did it right. We did it right. We had good kids who did what they were supposed to, who graduated. I mean I didn’t have one-and-dones back then.’’
Addressing the Camby penalties specifically, Calipari said, “It wasn’t what was printed. This time for us, we’re going to go back and celebrate it.’’
Calipari compiled a 193-71 record as the head coach at UMass.
This is how awesome it is to be a Boston sports fan
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