John Calipari Earns Victory No. 800 in Overtime Win over Mississippi State
John Calipari surpassed another significant career milestone Tuesday night, securing his 800th career on-court victory with an 82-74 overtime victory over Mississippi State.
He is just the 13th Division I head basketball coach to surpass the 800-win threshold. Jim Boeheim, Coach K, Bob Huggins and Jim Calhoun are the only other active head coaches with 800+ wins on their respective resumes.
Following the historic victory, Calipari gave all the credit to his players, current and former, for helping him reach rarified air in college basketball.
“It means I’ve been doing this a long time, had a lot of good players and publicly I’d like to thank all of those players from UMass, all of those players from Memphis, all those players here that have won all of these games,” Calipari said. “When you’re coaching good kids, when families entrust you with their sons, you’re blessed. To be in this job, with this fanbase, I am blessed.”
The achievement comes with an asterisk. The 800 wins are classified as “on-court wins” because the NCAA vacated a season’s worth of wins at UMass and Memphis after the agency declared Marcus Camby and Derrick Rose ineligible. The NCAA currently credits Calipari with 758 wins in 30 seasons as a head coach.
Of the 800 wins, 355 have happened over the last 12 seasons at Kentucky. He’ll go for win No. 356 this Saturday at Kansas’ Phog Allen Fieldhouse.
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