John Calipari
John Vincent Calipari (born February 10, 1959) is an American basketball coach. Since 2009, he has been the head coach of the University of Kentucky men's team, with whom he won the NCAA Championship in 2012. He has been named Naismith College Coach of the Year three times (in 1996, 2008 and 2015), and was inducted into the Basketball Hall of Fame in 2015.
He was previously the head coach at the University of Massachusetts from 1988 to 1996, the NBA's New Jersey Nets from 1996 to 1999 and the University of Memphis from 2000 to 2009, and was the head coach of the Dominican Republic national team in 2011 and 2012.
Calipari has coached Kentucky to four Final Fours, in 2011, 2012, 2014 and 2015. He also led UMass and Memphis to the Final Four in 1996 and 2008 respectively; those appearances were later vacated, though Calipari was cleared of wrongdoing in both cases. As a college coach, Calipari has twenty-eight 20-win seasons, eleven 30-win seasons, and five 35-win seasons.
As of December 29th, 2023, with 800 official wins, Calipari ranks 14th on the NCAA Division I all-time winningest coaches list. He has won one national championship.
Early life[edit | edit source]
Calipari was born in Moon Township, Pennsylvania, a suburb of Pittsburgh. He is of Italian descent. He attended Moon Area High School and graduated in 1978. His father worked in a steel mill and later at an airport. His mother worked in the school cafeteria, serving pizza.