Rick Pitino hopes Kentucky’s fans take it easy on John Calipari in his return to Lexington on Saturday night.
Pitino posted a video on X on Thursday on the matter and explained his reasoning behind it Friday as St. John’s prepared to host Providence Saturday afternoon at the Garden.
“I think some fans will boo him, but what I was hoping for was that a majority will not boo him,” said Pitino, who coached at Kentucky for eight seasons from 1989-97. “I know why they booed me — because I was coaching at Louisville. That was a different scenario. John didn’t want to leave Kentucky. Both parties knew it was time for him to move to a different job, and he did. He didn’t want to leave. … When I went in there, it was one of the lowest points of my Louisville tenure. It was 23,000 people booing me.”
Calipari will return to Kentucky as the head coach at Arkansas.
In 15 seasons, he led the Wildcats to a national championship and four Final Four berths.
They are doing well without him under new coach and former Pitino player Mark Pope, ranked 12th in the country.
Calipari, meanwhile, may not even reach the NCAA Tournament in his first season as the Razorbacks’ coach.
Arkansas is next-to-last in the loaded SEC and has dropped six of its last seven games.
Brady Dunlap’s hopes of returning this season are over.
After attempting to rehab his torn abdominal muscle, the sophomore sharpshooter will undergo surgery Thursday.
He can begin working out a month later and start full basketball activities two months after that.
“Obviously, it’s my dream to play on a top-15 team,” Dunlap said. “It’s kind of why I came here in the first place, so it’s pretty disappointing. But at the same time, I just have to look at it as positive from my personal perspective. I get another year in college with the medical redshirt. College is such an old game now, so I have to take it as a positive for myself and just cheer my guys on.”
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Dunlap said he is hopeful to be back next season at St. John’s.
“It’s really up to Coach Pitino at this point,” he said.
Dunlap, a former four-star recruit from Newhall, Calif., also missed time with a torn UCL in his left thumb that required surgery and initially sidelined him in mid-December.
