John Calipari made trip to see Hunter Dickinson this week before scheduling visit

The fate of Kentucky‘s frontcourt in 2023-24 may have been sealed at a tiny private airport in Ann Arbor this week.

John Calipari flew to Michigan on Tuesday to meet with star transfer Hunter Dickinson, the former Wolverine star announced on his podcast Thursday. It was a two-hour meeting at the airport, a quick stop-in and departure for the two parties.

“Cal flew to Michigan to see me — what day is it today, Thursday? He flew up Tuesday to meet with me in Michigan and he talked to me for like two hours,” Dickinson said. “We literally met at the airport, like the little private airport. Met there, then he flew somewhere else, I don’t know where.”

Calipari and Dickinson discussed the 7-foot-1 center’s potential interest in the Wildcats and changes the program has seen since his unofficial visit to Lexington back in high school. Among them? The addition of strength and conditioning coach Brady Welsh, leading to interest in a follow-up trip to visit the school this weekend. The dates — Sunday, April 23 through Tuesday, April 25 — were finalized on Wednesday.

“I told him I don’t think I need to visit there because I already took a visit there in high school, so it’s not like I’m not interested. That’s the only reason why there was no visit scheduled because I already went there, so it’s not like much has changed,” he said. “Once we talked about some things, and he mentioned they got a new strength coach, which is something that’s really important to me. So I’m like, I might as well take a visit there. We set that up yesterday (Wednesday). Literally yesterday, I was like, ‘Can I come Monday?’ And they’re like, ‘Yeah, bet.’ So we set that up.”

And then the interesting stuff: Oscar Tshiebwe’s situation and how it impacts Dickinson’s recruitment. The standout center made it clear that it was something that needed to be addressed, part of his conversation with Calipari this week.

Though he didn’t explicitly confirm anything one way or the other, he sure made it clear that Kentucky isn’t planning on having Tshiebwe back in Lexington.

“We talked about that situation occurring. We talked about that situation obviously because that’s very contingent on, even if I was interested in them that’s why I wanted to meet with them, to talk about that because that has a lot to do with me even being interested in them at all. We talked about that,” Dickinson said. “I don’t really want to say what was said because that’s another person’s — I don’t want to say what he’s doing because that’s his business but obviously whatever we talked about was good enough for me to take the visit, so I guess that’s news right there.”

Dickinson added that on top of his current trip to Kansas starting today and his visit to Kentucky starting Sunday, he has also scheduled a trip to Villanova starting next Friday.

Watch the entire conversation — NSFW, by the way — below:

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