Skip to main content
KSRKSR Plus
KSBoard
Kentucky
Join KSR+

Calipari gifted Coach K a bottle of Pappy. "I need some bourbon right now to be honest with you."

Drew Franklinby: Drew Franklin11/10/21DrewFranklinKSR
calipari-gifted-coach-k-a-bottle-of-pappy-i-need-some-bourbon-right-now-to-be-honest-with-you
(Photo: Pappy Van Winkle)

In celebration of Coach K’s last season, the three other head coaches in the Champions Classic teamed up to give Duke’s coach a parting gift from Kentucky, Kansas, and Michigan State. It was a bottle of 23-year Pappy Van Winkle bourbon, one of the hardest-to-find bourbons in the wild.

John Calipari acquired the bourbon per Bill Self’s suggestion, and together the three coaches were to split the tab. They did not split the tab, Calipari said after the game, because Self and Tom Izzo have yet to pay up.

“They didn’t chip in, just so you know,” Calipari noted. (A bottle of 23 year goes for $2,000+ on the secondary market, if you can even find one to purchase.)

“When we gave it to him, it was, if you don’t drink bourbon, and I knew he didn’t; but if you don’t drink bourbon, you save this and when I retire you give it back to me,” Calipari continued. “He came up to me prior to the game and said, ‘My daughter saw this and said, ‘You can’t get this!’ And I knew he didn’t know.”

Calipari joked that Coach K probably would’ve poured it out.

“I would’ve done the same,” he said, “but now I live in Kentucky so I know what bourbon is… “I need some bourbon right now to be honest with you.”

Discuss This Article

Comments have moved.

Join the conversation and talk about this article and all things Kentucky Sports in the new KSR Message Board.

KSBoard

2025-11-09