Coach Cal Tells the Truth

“Coach Cal just tells you the truth more than anything…When Coach Cal came I was surprised because he told me something I didn’t want to hear and players did not want to hear.”
-Malik Monk, from CoachCal.com’s “Meet the Wildcats” series

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“I was on the fence. I had offers from Memphis, Connecticut. Then Coach Cal came to my house. He told me that if I didn’t work hard for him I wouldn’t play, and that if the team didn’t work hard we wouldn’t win. And without that we’d have no shot at a championship. It was hard to hear, but motivating. It was the truth.”
-A. Goodwin, 2012

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“I was thinking about transferring to Kentucky from Mississsippi State and Coach Cal told me like it was. He said ‘I’m not going to lie, Twany, if you come here you’re going to have to give it all you got. If you’re not going to, don’t come here. He just told me the truth, you know? At the end of the day, that’s what I needed.”
-T. Beckham, 2011

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“I was recruited by Billy Gillispie, so I wasn’t sure how it would be when Coach Cal came on. But I liked him. I remember one day, the team was celebrating his birthday after practice, you know, like a surprise. I gave him a $25 gift card to Chili’s inside a card. I thought he would love it. He opened the card and said ‘I really don’t like Chili’s, does anyone want this?’ and no one responded so he tossed it on the ground. It was hard to hear, but he told the truth. He always did.”
-D. Orton, 2011

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“I was going on a date and had to swing by the basketball offices to sign some paperwork. Coach Cal was there. He leaned back in his chair and looked me over. ‘That jacket’s not working with those pants,’ he said ‘it’s like, the jacket’s black and the pants are, like, a different shade of black.’ Then he said that I couldn’t pull off a turtleneck, he said a lot of guys can but I can’t because it puts too much accent on my neck. He said I look bad in a turtleneck. It wasn’t what I wanted to hear but I went straight back to the dorm and changed. I got a kiss that night.”
-N. Noel, 2013

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“I remember we were practicing one day and Coach Cal pulled me aside. He said ‘Trey, I’m afraid of spiders. I’ve always been. Also, sometimes at night I feel really alone.’ I told him it was okay, we all feel that way sometimes. Then he got really quiet for a minute and said ‘Trey, when I was in the eighth grade, we were dissecting frogs and I threw mine at the chalkboard, and the teacher turned around and she thought this guy Clark Goolen did it and he got detention, and I never told her it was me, and I let him go to detention. It feels good to get that off my chest, Trey.’”
-T. Lyles, 2014

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“One day Coach Cal asked me into his office and told me to have a seat. He told me it was time I knew something important, that there was a clandestine society of the world’s richest people and that they were secretly putting chemicals in the water of our nation’s major cities that would make us subservient, you know, to do what they say, and that some day they were going to turn us all into a super-army of killers, and that the chemicals will have weakened our minds so much we won’t be able to resist. That they’re just going to use us as brainwashed zombie soldiers to go to China and get their gold or something. He said he thought I needed to know. It was something I didn’t want to hear, but he told me the truth. He always tells the truth…I’ve stopped drinking tap water, I can tell you that.”
-I. Briscoe, 2015