John Calipari ready to "chase greatness" with Kentucky this season

Just how good can this Kentucky basketball team be in 2022-23? We’ve already got a four-game sample size in the Bahamas when the Wildcats won each matchup by an average of 50 points. And they did so against pros and college teams.

It helps when you return the consensus National Player of the Year and a Bob Cousy Award finalist at the center and point guard positions. Doesn’t hurt that Jacob Toppin and Daimion Collins appear to have made significant jumps, CJ Fredrick is healthy, Lance Ware has embraced his role, Antonio Reeves has adjusted seamlessly from the Missouri Valley to the SEC and Cason Wallace, Chris Livingston and even Adou Thiero look like day-one contributors.

Add it all up, and you’ve got yourself a real contender. Don’t believe me? Ask John Calipari, who believes this team is capable of “(chasing) greatness.”

“Let’s chase greatness. How good can this team be?” Calipari said during a sitdown with Players First Fantasy Experience campers this weekend in Lexington. “When you watched the games in the Bahamas, were you like, ‘Wow!’?”

Coach Cal sure did — and so did the teams the Wildcats played.

“Let me just say this, the Dominican team thought they would give us a game,” Calipari said. “They were stunned walking out about what we did to them because they played other American teams. Then they put two or three extra guys against us. Another team from our league played them, it was a six- or eight-point game. The Canadian team, they were a college team from Canada. They thought they were going to beat us. They did. (Tec de Monterrey) we knew wouldn’t be that good. Then the last team, they had a guy with a grey beard — they were 35.

“They came in — we played the night before and then we played at noon the next day. They had not. I’m not making excuses, but I will tell you my team knew it was their last night in the Bahamas. They had sleepies in their eyes, and in the first half, they got bumped around and physical, had to fight in the second half, which I loved. I wanted the game to be close.”

Calipari said he learned a lot about his team down in the Bahamas, but also by interacting with his players on a day-to-day basis. The confidence the Wildcats have shown this summer in practice translated to the exhibition games in paradise. Individual growth translated.

He’s also learned that the team is going into the 2022-23 season with a chip on its shoulder after losing to St. Peter’s in the opening round of the NCAA Tournament in March. It took some time to get over the loss as a program, but now, the Wildcats are using it as fuel.

“What you found out, the biggest thing: we’ve got a good group, good players. The vets have gotten better, every one of them more confident,” Calipari said. “… This team is using that (St. Peter’s) stuff as fuel. Took us all some time to get over that, I’ve not had a team lose that kind of game in, well, that was the first time. I was stunned. ‘We lost that game?’ … This team is using that as fuel, and I’m loving it.”

It hasn’t taken long for Calipari to realize he’s working with that kind of team this season. And he wants Big Blue Nation to enjoy watching them because he certainly will enjoy coaching them.

“No one is stealing my joy. I’m going to have a ball coaching these guys,” he said. “The competitiveness — yeah, they’re going to compete against each other, but they’re going to be about each other. Toughest schedule in the country. Not the weakest, the toughest. Here we go, let’s go do this. I’m excited. … We’ve got that kind of group. I just want you to enjoy them as much as I enjoy them.”

To close out the evening at the banquet dinner and charity auction, the Wildcats played a game of Family Feud, with the winning team taking home $10,000 cash thanks to name, image and likeness — it was part of the Fantasy Experience weekend where players served as coaches.

Rather than pocketing the money, the players requested to donate every dime to flood relief in Eastern Kentucky. This comes after the team came together to set up an open practice and telethon for flood victims, an event that raised over $3 million.

The players then worked with Samaritan’s Feet in the Bahamas, where they washed the feet of local children in need and distributed new pairs of shoes to those in attendance.

Not only are they special talents on the floor, they’ve proven to have big hearts away from it, as well. Those two things together, Calipari says, can create some “crazy” possibilities as a team.

“It’s amazing. If you have a kind heart, my guess is you’re going to be a great teammate,” Calipari said. “The talent, the size, the athleticism, the skill of a bunch of young people who have good hearts — this is kind of crazy where this could go. I’m saying it because I’ve been around them, I’ve seen the players who came back, how much they’ve improved.”