By Keith Taylor
Kentucky Today
Kentucky athletics director Mitch Barnhart pushed aside rumors of having a poor relationship with men’s basketball coach John Calipari on Wednesday night.
“I’m not a guy who gets in coaches’ business, any of my coaches, and they’ll all tell you that,” Barnhart said in an interview with WLEX-TV and “BBN Tonight.” “We let them do their work and try and stay out of their way. Do I wish I could be around more? I probably will work at that. That’s on me.
“At the end of the day, I trust him to do his job and we always want to make adjustments to get better. So let’s put the notion of no relationship out the door.”
Kentucky Athletics Director Mitch Barnhart and men’s basketball coach John Calipari appeared on WLEX-TV and its “BBN Tonight” show Wednesday night. (Screenshot of WLEX-TV, via Kentuckky Today)
Calipari added: “There are so many things out there that aren’t accurate, correct. You can’t defend all this stuff. You just have to let it go. Hopefully people logically look at it and say, look, they’ve done a lot of good together.”
The coach and his boss had a closed-door meeting Tuesday five days following Kentucky’s 80-76 loss to Oakland in the opening round of the NCAA Tournament. In the meeting, the two discussed what has been described as “highs and lows” during the past 15 years.
“That’s part of athletics and dealing with that, trying to get better, trying to figure out how do we do this together,” Calipari said. “What do we need to do? I think one of the things that I’ve said about the meeting was Mitch saying, ‘How can I help you? What can we do to help you get where you’re trying to get this thing?’ And we talked about three or four things, but that’s when you’re coaching.”
The team’s success and struggles this past season were “no mystery” Barnhart said and he understands the frustrations within the fan base.
“Our fans know what the standard is,” Barnhart said. “We know what the standard is and that’s part of it. We, the mantle we’ve been entrusted with, is critically important to both of us. We talked about that.”
Calipari said the team’s two losses in the postseason, a first-round exit in the Southeastern Conference Tournament, followed by a first-round letdown in the NCAA Tournament a week later were hard to swallow.
“And you know what, it hurt me the most? Losing that game, knowing fans traveled, knowing they traveled to the SEC and they spent money and maybe money they didn’t have to be there,” Calipari said. “I know that I’ve never taken it lightly. I’ve been all over this state and met all kind of people from all walks of life, and they all love Kentucky basketball, but losing there for the fans killed me.”
Barnhart added he wants Calipari and himself to leave a legacy when the end of the run does transpire. They wanted to leave the program and the department in good hands.
“Whatever we do in our careers, both of us want to exit well. Whatever you do, not a lot of people in our industry, in our enterprise of college athletics, get to exit the way you want to exit,” Barnhart said. “I want us to be able to exit well and be able to say we left it in a really good spot for the people that came behind us.
“What ends up happening a lot of times is it gets left on the side of the track in a heap, in a mess, and you say, ‘Good luck to the next guy.’ That’s not what would either one of us want. We would want to be good caretakers for the program, and we want to leave it in the right spot for the next person.”
Calipari agreed.
“Make it future proof,” he said. “Everybody knows I care about the kids. They know who I am with that. But it’s not a contest — this program. I’ve put my heart and soul in this program. So, yes, I care. What we do is a reflection of how we are and how much we care.”
