John Calipari doesn’t seem too worried about rival Duke’s recent success in recruiting.
Calipari’s Kentucky teams used to consistently dominate in the recruiting front and land all sorts of top-10 players every year, while Duke seemed to shy away from the one-and-done types. That’s changed somewhat as Duke landed three top-10 recruits for the class of 2017 and now has four for 2018 thanks to the Zion Williamson commitment.
Calipari thinks he knows what Duke’s recruiting pitch is to top players — that the program will take care of them forever — but he’s not buying it.
“I don’t sell, like, ‘When you come here, the university and the state will take care of you the rest of your life,’ ” Calipari said at a press conference Monday, via SEC Country. “You may buy that, and I’ve got some great property in some swampland down in Florida to sell you, too.”
Calipari got his information about Duke’s “set for life” pitch from one of his players, Hamidou Diallo, who described the two schools’ pitches in 2016.
“Kentucky’s pitch was just the NBA thing,” Diallo said via the Louisville Courier-Journal. “Duke’s pitch was if you come to Duke, you’re going to be set for life. It’s more than just basketball. (John Calipari’s) pitch was he gets guys ready for the next level. Look at the numbers: it shows. It’s the best place for you if you want to make it to the NBA.”
But wait, there’s more! We haven’t gotten to the best part yet. After dismissing Duke’s “set for life” pitch, Calipari then boasted about his program we this awesome quote:
Everybody’s talking about Calipari’s supposed Duke shade when this is actually the best part of his presser pic.twitter.com/pgXQ6SgCa8
— Mark Armstrong (@ArmstrongABC11) January 22, 2018
A billion dollars! The way he delivered that was awesome. And you know he loves doing it too based on his rivalry with Duke.
Who are some of the Kentucky players making money in the pros? How about John Wall, Anthony Davis, DeMarcus Cousins, Enes Kanter, Karl-Anthony Towns, Brandon Knight and Eric Bledsoe to name a few? Yeah, Calipari still has a pretty good pitch to recruits.
