John Calipari sends touching message to Jerry Stackhouse for adding son, Brad, to Vanderbilt staff
It’s common place for coaches across college athletics to help each other out, like many other professions out there. And after working in college basketball for a couple of decades, Kentucky head coach John Calipari has no shortage of connections across the landscape. After Jerry Stackhouse was recently fired as the head man of the Vanderbilt Commodores, Calipari wanted to send him a touching message thanking him for hiring his son as a part of the Vandy staff.
“I couldn’t be more proud of Brad and who he is becoming as coach and man. I’m really thankful to Jerry Stackhouse for giving him the opportunity to learn from somebody I have such great respect for. And now the next chapter begins!!” John Calipari wrote on X, formerly known as Twitter, on Wednesday afternoon.
More on Brad Calipari’s coaching career
Brad Calipari joined Stackhouse’s staff last July as their Director of On-Court Player Development. The son of the Hall of Fame coach joined the Wildcats in Pittsburgh while wearing the blue and white as Kentucky prepares to tangle with the Oakland Golden Grizzlies in the opening round of the 2024 NCAA Tournament.
Brad Calipari also spent the 2022-2023 season as the Director of Player Development for LIU Brooklyn in Brooklyn, New York. At LIU, Calipari worked alongside head coach Rod Strickland–a former NBA veteran who eventually made the transition to the coaching world.
Before his time in Brooklyn, Calipari worked as a grad assistant for the Kentucky Wildcats, earning his Master’s certificate in Sports Kinesiology in 2022.
Jerry Stackhouse time at Vanderbilt comes to an end
Stackhouse finished with a 70-92 record over his five years as head coach of the Commodores. He opened with an 11-21 season in 2019-2020, which was actually a big improvement from the year before when Vandy finished winless in the SEC.
In year two, Stackhouse didn’t see much better success finishing 9-16, but that was the COVID-shortened year. He did start building some momentum in the 2021-22 season, where Vanderbilt finished their first season over .500 since 2017 at 19-17 and even won seven SEC games, also their most since ’17.
2022-23 began with some promise and wound up being Stackhouse’s best season with the Commodores. Vandy dropped some puzzling non-conference games that year but rallied for an 11-7 finish and 4th place in the SEC with Stackhouse earning Co-Coach of the Year honors in the SEC. However, the early losses sunk their ship in terms of NCAA Tournament.
But with the starting backcourt returning off that promising ’23 group, plus a few nice transfer portal additions, Stackhouse entered 2023-24 with the program in its best shape yet. Then, Vanderbilt got out of the gates with a terrible November and never really found momentum, ultimately sliding down to finish 13th in the SEC, making it four out of five years with a double-digit SEC Tournament seed while posting the worst record of the Jerry Stackhouse era at 9-23.
On3’s Alex Weber also contributed to this article.