John Calipari built perennial contenders at Kentucky with the very best amateur basketball players in America. He shunned experience for one-and-dones. He took in high school All-Americans and churned out lottery picks. He won championships and hundreds of games along the way, and then, in 2021, he scrapped that model for an entirely new approach.
In 2022, on Thursday in Indianapolis, it backfired.
Kentucky — big, bad Kentucky — succumbed to No. 15 seed Saint Peter's in an opening-round NCAA tournament game that few thought would even be worth watching. The Peacocks, representing a tiny Jesuit school in Jersey City, New Jersey, stunned one of college basketball's bluest bluebloods in overtime, 85-79.