DeMarcus Cousins says Arkansas will be on TV every night, not Kentucky: "It'll never be the same"
DeMarcus Cousins has had some takes on his alma mater of eight months since Kentucky‘s season ended in embarrassment.
First, he said it “doesn’t even make sense” for the Wildcats to even consider another head coach beyond John Calipari in Lexington.
“Everything Calipari brings to a program is going to go down if they replace this guy. Everything is going down,” he said following the Oakland loss.
Then when the news went official last week he would be taking the Arkansas job, Cousins said former Kentucky star Rajon Rondo should be the guy to replace Calipari and lead the Wildcats back to championship status.
“I think the perfect hire for UK at this point would be Rajon Rondo,” Cousins added. “I honestly think Rajon would be the perfect guy for this situation. Obviously, he’s a Kentucky kid. He played at Kentucky, he’s an alumni. … I don’t think there’s a better leader to lead Kentucky out of this spot than a Rajon Rondo.”
It would not be Rondo. Instead, Mitch Barnhart went with BYU’s Mark Pope to pick up where Calipari left off, announced as the program’s next head coach on Friday.
Amid Barnhart’s quick search that also included the likes of Baylor’s Scott Drew and UConn’s Dan Hurley, Cousins made it clear that no matter who the Wildcats found to take over, Arkansas will be the new hot name of college basketball. In his eyes, Calipari is going to do exactly what he did when leaving Memphis for Kentucky: get dudes and win immediately.
“I think everybody is going to get a real taste of reality moving forward. We’ve seen this movie before with Cal. Where he goes becomes the hot spot,” Cousins said. “I put Cal and Deion Sanders in the same category. Deion has the Prime effect, it’s the same thing with Calipari. Arkansas will now be the hot spot. Arkansas will now have the No. 1 recruiting class every single year, Arkansas will be full of celebrities. Good luck finding a replacement for Cal because it’s going to be very, very hard.”
According to Cousins, it will be Arkansas leading the TV ratings and pulling in the best of the best moving forward, not Kentucky. What the Wildcats experienced over the last decade and a half will never be replicated, he believes.
“What we experienced in those 15 years of Cal being there, we will never experience again. Even when it comes to TV games, the revenue, everything that comes with Cal,” Cousins said. “What kids are looking for in today’s time is what’s hot, what’s cool, what’s relevant. I wanna be on TV every single night to show my talent. Guess what team’s going to be on TV? Every night? The Arkansas Razorbacks. It’ll never be the same.”
We’ll see if Mark Pope has anything to say about that.
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