Kentucky insider details 'disaster' behind the scenes of John Calipari move

Following John Calipari’s move from Kentucky to Arkansas, Kentucky Sports Radio host Matt Jones unloaded on the “disaster” behind the scenes for the UK basketball program under Coach Cal the last several years.

Jones and other media members had suggested that the operation has been completely disorganized and disconnected lately, but now that he is officially gone, the KSR host went in-depth on some of the issues plaguing Calipari and the program in the 2020s, when the team’s performance experienced a sharp decline compared to the 2010s.

“It was a disaster behind the scenes. It was a disaster,” said Matt Jones Monday morning on KSR, explaining how the relationships between Cal and those around the program had deteriorated.

“Calipari became, for the people at UK, impossible to work with. He did. That’s why people connected to him left. He was just too much. I think they all still loved him, he’s not a bad person, but he just became too much.”

Jones emphasizes staff departures as signals

Specifically, Jones has long emphasized how important the departures of three major pillars of the early Calipari years negatively impacted the program — former assistant coach Kenny Payne, former assistant coach John Robic, and former deputy director of athletics DeWayne Peevy.

“All you got to do is look and see who left. We’ve talked a lot about Robic, Peevy and Kenny, but it’s more than that,” said Jones.

He explained that each complimented a part of Calipari’s profile as a coach that was weaker — whether that be smoothing relationship between Cal and AD Mitch Barnhart (Peevy), handling player relationships (Payne) or x’s and o’s coaching (Robic).

But those weren’t the only losses.

“When Eric Lindsey leaves to go work at the Blood Center, or when TJ Beisner leaves to go take the same job at North Carolina, when Jai Lucas leaves to go be the same coach at Duke for less money — what does that tell you? It tells you they can’t do it anymore.”

Lindsey worked in communications with the basketball team, while Lucas was an assistant at Kentucky for one year before bolting for Duke, while Beisner left Kentucky for a similar position at North Carolina.

Calipari wanted to prove everyone wrong

Next, Matt Jones shifted focus towards Calipari’s personality lately as a coach who wanted to win, but just as much, wanted to prove folks wrong — fans, media, boosters, administration, etc. — while doing it.

“He became obsessed with proving critics wrong and winning his way. The man wants to win, but he wanted to win his way. He wanted to win the way he thought you should play, the way he thought you should do things, so that he could win and then say ‘see.'”

Jones specifically pointed to the fiery postgame press conference after Kentucky’s win at Auburn this past season as a summation of this vengeful mindset from Calipari.

“To me, Calipari post-COVID is best summed up by the Auburn postgame press conference. If you want the best encapsulation of what it’s like to be around Cal the last four years, watch that press conference. It was Cal unfiltered. He came in and said: ‘See. See what I did.’

“He was angry at everyone. He was angry at fans, angry at media, he was angry at boosters, he was angry at people at UK, and that anger just overwhelmed him. It just did.”

More on behind-the-scenes ‘disaster’

We don’t know the juicy details yet, but according to Matt Jones, there were some stories underneath the surface with Calipari and Kentucky hoops recently that were hardly believable.

“There’s some stories that came out of there the last 3-4 years that were crazy — so crazy that when you heard them you’d go ‘well, that can’t be true.’ And then it would be, and you’d go, ‘are you serious?'”

Jones and one of his co-hosts, Drew Franklin, have not-so-subtly hinted before that Calipari had some assistant coaches not doing their part. Franklin has even claimed there were coaches “stealing money” with their salaries based on what they were providing. “Like, just the laziness of some of the staff members was beyond belief,” said Jones.

Relationships had completely deteriorated

Lastly, Jones explained just how isolated John Calipari had become in Lexington, noting that every important person around the program came to have pretty much no positive relationship with the head coach.

“This is a fact: at the end of his time, he had no relationship of substance with his athletic director, no relationship of substance with his athletic department, no relationship of substance with the biggest boosters, no relationship of substance with the media, any of them.

“He was down to having a couple of his people contact national media. He had no one locally. So when things went bad, who was there to turn to? Why do you think when we lost (to Oakland), he immediately went to New Jersey? That’s not a person connected. When things go bad, that’s when you need people, and the reality is he had run those people off.”

With one final comment, Matt Jones made sure there’s no illusion with why the 2020s went south under John Calipari:

“These last four years are his fault, both on the court and off the court. So, Arkansas did Kentucky a blessing.”