John Calipari and the Kentucky Wildcats fell in the first round of the 2024 NCAA Tournament to 14-seed Oakland, which was fueled by an otherworldly shooting night beyond the 3-point arc. The Wildcats were -13.5 favorites via FanDuel heading into Thursday night and instead became the premier upset of Day 1.

Kentucky, a team that was by all accounts one of the best offensive units in the country this past regular season, looked frazzled from the jump while Oakland and guard Jack Gohlke did not. The latter was just 1 3-pointer shy of tying an NCAA record for the most triples made in an NCAA Tournament game, draining 10 before the dust settled for a season-high 32 points.

Kentucky and its fans are familiar with this feeling. Just 2 years ago, Saint Peter’s downed the Wildcats to begin their jaunt to the Elite 8. In 2021 the Cats missed the Big Dance altogether. Even this year, the Cats fell in the quarterfinals of the SEC Tournament to Texas A&M. Those are unacceptable results in the eyes of many from Big Blue Nation.

Following the Wildcats’ loss, Calipari was asked how – if at all – he will change his philosophy when it comes to both roster construction and playstyle. Here’s what he had to say:

“It’s a good question,” Calipari started. “Like, I’ve done this with young teams my whole career, and it’s going to be hard for me to change that, because we’ve helped so many young people and their families that I don’t see myself just saying, okay, we’re not going to recruit freshmen. I mean, the thing that we’ve been blessed with is families bring their sons to us and we do what we’re supposed to do to help them prepare for the rest of their lives.”

Calipari went on to say that while there are legitimate concerns and ways he’d like to improve his teams, he is overall pleased with the style in which he coached his team to play this season.

“But I’ve taken some older guys, and we’ve done it. I like what we were doing offensively. How do we get tougher? How do we get more physical? My teams defensively in rebounding have all been better than this, but we’ve never been like this offensively. I kind of like coaching the way I did this year.”

There have been calls to move on from Calipari following this season. But Kentucky hoops’ head coach is still optimistic for the future.

“So we’ve gotta figure out who’s coming back and who’s not. We got this transfer stuff going on,” Calipari said. “We may not need it. We have an unbelievable group coming in that I feel really good about.”