By Eddie Pells
AP Photo/Darron Cummings
Here are the numbers. John Calipari doesn’t care if you want to hear them or not:
Kentucky’s grade-point average: 3.1
Number of players with a 3.0 GPA or better: 13.
Number of players who have graduated over his first five seasons at Kentucky: 10, with four more coming this year.
The Kentucky coach spends large chunks of his time at the NCAA tournament answering questions about one-and-done, and what that trend — growing everywhere, but most prevalent at his program — means for college basketball and its players.
He makes no apologies, and rattles off the facts as he sees them almost as quickly as the stats about his team’s academic achievements.
“These kids have a genius,” Calipari said today, two days before the undefeated Wildcats play Wisconsin in the Final Four. “Our jobs are to help them grow on and off the court, to help them become better men, to be prepared for society, yet they’re chasing a dream and they have a genius.”
That genius could lead to their making more than $100 million for playing basketball — an amount that has grown exponentially over the last 20 years. Calipari refuses to stand in the way of that.
“You have to respect that,” he said. “We just try to make sure we make this about the kids.”