[Hoot Gibson]

Calapari ain't the best in game coach but he is the best coach we've had since Rupp. Some of you should get on the Gillespie wagon. He made it to the national championship game

I was obviously being sarcastic. I would choose Slick Rick to coach a tight game, but Calipari is the best coach at UK since Rupp. numbers don't lie. it's laughable that fans bash Calipari for305 wins, seven elite eight's and four final 4's out of 10 years.

You're right about the numbers not lying but the numbers say that Pitino did more in the six years that he coached following UK's probation than Calipari has done. Unlike Pitino, Calipari does not coach his players up. His success depends primarily on his recruiting ability, whereas although Pitino was not quite the recruiter that Calipari has been, he didn't need to be.

In his 10 seasons at UK, Calipari has won 81.1 percent of his games. In 8 seasons at UK, Pitino won 81.4 percent of his games. In the 6 seasons that followed UK's probation, UK won 85.9 percent of its games under Pitino.

Only in Pitino's first season, a season in which UK was on probation with a roster depleted through the transfer of UK's two best players and NCAA imposed scholarship limits, did Pitino lose more than 4 SEC games. Calipari has lost 5 or more SEC games in 5 of his 10 seasons as UK's head coach.

In the 6 non-probation years, Pitino only failed to reach the Elite 8 once and he never failed to advance past the first round of the tournament. In those 6 seasons, Pitino's UK teams won an NCAA Championship and were runners-up once. Calipari has done the same in 10 seasons.

Calipari has recruited better than Pitino did but has done less with more talent. In 3 of his 10 seasons at UK, Calipari has lost 11 or more games. In his 6 non-probation seasons, Pitino's worst record was 27-7.

Pitino is the second best coach that UK has ever had and Calipari is a distant third, at best.