When John Calipari came to Kentucky, the once-proud program had taken quite the tumble into obscurity.
The program with seven national titles at the time had failed to reach the second weekend of the NCAA Tournament in four-straight years, including an NIT berth the year before Calipari arrived.
But Calipari wasn’t about to bring Kentucky back to glory by himself. He needed a major recruiting class that would turn around the fortunes of the program and make Kentucky Basketball a fun program again.
DeMarcus Cousins played an instrumental role in that, and after a memorable season in Lexington, he left to pursue his lifelong dream of playing in the NBA.