Calipari also spoke with Gonzaga, Texas and OSU before scheduling WKU

Kentucky head coach John Calipari worked the phones in search of a home-run opponent to replace Louisville this week.

During his weekly call-in radio show, Coach Cal said that he begun looking for potential replacement games almost immediately after Kentucky’s win over North Carolina in Las Vegas. When he heard Louisville had a positive COVID-19 case on the team, he knew an outbreak was possible, and he had to come up with a backup plan in a hurry.

“When I heard one of their guys had COVID, I said, ‘There’s a really good chance we’re not going to be playing this game,'” Calipari said. “And I said that right after the game when I heard they had a guy sick. So we started right then. I started making some calls if this happens.”

It started with Ohio State, Kentucky’s original opponent in the CBS Sports Classic.

“I called Ohio State,” Calipari said. “I said, ‘Chris Holtmann, why don’t we play the game? We both prepared for each other. Let’s try to play the game and I’ll come up, bring Kentucky to Columbus, we’ll do a home-and-home,’ which I don’t do very often. I think he wanted to do it, but he just didn’t think they could get it done because of their numbers.”

And then he tried Gonzaga.

“You know Mark Few and I are friends. Is it Gonzaga? Well, we talked about it. ‘Let’s do this.’ He still wants to do it, he wants to play, and I’d like us to play them just because he and I are friends. He runs a terrific program.”

He added that there was a chance Gonzaga could be added to the schedule in the future, it just couldn’t get put together in time this week.

“I think it could,” Calipari said of a potential series with the Zags. “Here’s what I would say with Gonzaga: we just didn’t have enough time. If we had known Saturday that it was definitely not happening, we probably could have done some different things.”

From there, it was Texas, another opportunity that fizzled out. This time, though, it was due to a unique opportunity presenting itself that would help out the state.

“Texas had an opening, but here was the thing we had to get to — there were two things,” Calipari said. “We have a sold-out arena, we had to get someone in there that — you know what I was trying to do. How can we get an opponent in their? The other part is, West Kentucky, we have to honor, we have to respect, we have to bring light to (it). We got a call and Western Kentucky said, ‘Let’s do this.'”

It was an opportunity to raise even more money for an area that desperately needs it.

“The tornado went through Bowling Green too. You had damage there. We know Mayfield, we know Dawson Springs, we know the other smaller towns. My hope is this is a packed arena. … We need our fans there, but more importantly, we’re going to do things that benefit West Kentucky. … There will be money given to West Kentucky from this game, no question.”

Calipari admitted that Kentucky’s impressive performance against North Carolina on Saturday hurt their chances to play a top-tier program on such short notice. Teams weren’t willing to give up surefire home wins against cupcake opponents for a true road game against a UK team that finally found its groove against a blue blood school like UNC.

When push came to shove, though, Kentucky found the opponent it needed to given the situation.

“What do you think hurt us when finding an opponent? What we did to Carolina! Now all of a sudden teams that would say, ‘Yeah, we’re playing,’ they’re looking like, ‘Holy cow, are you that or what you did against Notre Dame?’

“At the end of the day, the best team for us to play in this situation is Western Kentucky.”