Editor’s note: This is the second piece in a series commemorating John Calipari’s dominant decade at Kentucky. Coming Wednesday: Meet the All-John Calipari Kentucky Team

Since arriving 10 years ago, John Calipari has won 302 games as Kentucky’s coach. That’s more than Mike Krzyzewski and Roy Williams. It’s more than Jim Boeheim and Rick Pitino. It’s more than everybody except Bill Self, who has won one more.

Along the way, Calipari has taken Kentucky to 9 NCAA Tournaments. He’s won it all once and reached the Final Four 4 times in a 5-year span.

Kentucky’s decade of Calipari has produced more than its fair share of memorable moments on and off the court. Here are 10 that stand out above the rest.

10. Drake airballs Big Blue Madness

One aspect of Calipari’s reign that some love and others loathe is the constant flirtation with celebrities. Rapper Drake became a common presence in and around the UK program, and a memorable lowlight of that association came in Big Blue Madness 2014, when Drake donned warm-ups and tried to act like a basketball player. Hopefully, the ‘Cats could rap better than Drake could hoop.

9. Platoons

Maybe it helped UK, maybe it hurt in the end, but Calipari’s 2015 squad was so deep and talented that through much of the 2014-15 season, he had the luxury of fielding two platooning units of five players. If the idea seems absurd, consider that the “second” group (at least early in the season, before an injury to Alex Poythress) included future NBA players Tyler Ulis, Devin Booker, Trey Lyles and Dakari Johnson.

8. Boogie Cousins gets tackled

If there are two topics that received the brunt of critical cynicism during the earliest days of Calipari’s Kentucky tenure, it was one-and-done players and the SEC Tournament.

Calipari himself has been a huge critic of the league tourney, and the knowledge that his fan base loves it has done little to change his mind. All of this simply made it extra refreshing when DeMarcus Cousins sent the title game of Calipari’s first SEC Tournament to overtime with a buzzer-beating put-back, which was celebrated so vigorously that Cousins emerged slightly bloodied … by his own teammates.

Wall, Cousins, Bledsoe, et al., might have looked mercenary to the national media, but for one glorious moment, they were excited college freshmen.

(Oh, and Calipari has won the SEC Tournament 6 times in 10 years.)

7. Knocking off Ohio State

Calipari’s second UK team struggled through a relatively mediocre season before catching fire late … best demonstrated in their Sweet 16 upset of the NCAA’s top-seeded Ohio State Buckeyes. The 2011 NCAA Tournament game was most memorable for UK everyman Josh Harrellson matching All-American Jared Sullinger in production … and for Brandon Knight’s game-winning jumper. UK topped No. 1 and made it to the Final Four before falling to UConn.

6. 2K for UK

Early in Calipari’s first season, on December 21, 2009, Kentucky became the first NCAA program to reach 2,000 wins. The moment gave Calipari a chance to connect Kentucky’s illustrious past to a future that was suddenly a thousand times brighter than the one Billy Gillispie planned only a few months earlier.

5. 38-0

Unfortunately, the 2015 team is often remembered for falling short in the Final Four, but the completion of an undefeated regular season placed the team in rare air for any power 5 squad. The last team to enter the SEC Tournament undefeated before Kentucky in 2015 was Kentucky … in 1934. Not only did Kentucky go 31-0 during the regular season in 2015, but only twice were the Wildcats closely challenged — in back-to-back January games against Ole Miss and at Texas A&M. Both went to overtime.

They won 7 more postseason games — by an average of 18.7 points — to get to 38-0 before the perfect season ended with the Final Four to Wisconsin.

4. A clutch run from Aaron Harrison

What could add to Kentucky’s unlikely 2014 run to the NCAA title game? Possibly a historic set of big baskets from freshman guard Aaron Harrison. Harrison drilled big shot after big shot in close wins over Wichita State, Louisville, Michigan and Wisconsin — none bigger than the dagger over the Badgers in the national semifinal. Harrison’s shots match up as some of the biggest buckets in UK history.

3. 2010 NBA Draft night

Yes, it’s still something of a sore subject. In his servant-leadership book of clichés, Calipari has loudly and frequently maintained that his goal is developing players, not winning championships. Ergo, his claim that this night was the biggest in his first season as UK coach, one in which the Cats went 35-3. That said, Kentucky had never had a No. 1  overall pick before John Wall (Sam Bowie famously was No. 2 ahead of a UNC shooting guard in 1984), and had certainly never boasted 5 first-round draft picks. For that matter, the entire previous decade had featured 3 first-round draft picks from UK — in total.

After Wall, Cousins went No. 5 overall to Sacramento, followed by Patrick Patterson (No. 14, Houston), Eric Bledsoe (No. 18, Oklahoma City) and Daniel Orton (No. 29, Orlando).

That draft set the tone for everything that followed.

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2. In-state rivalry in the NCAA Tournament

Before Kentucky met Louisville in the 2012 Final Four, the schools hadn’t had a Big Dance meeting since 1983. But between the Pitino-to-Louisville bad blood, the combative relationship of Calipari and Pitino, and the natural in-state rivalry, the Cats vs. Cards rivalry was already at all-time high levels … and then, the two met in 2012 and 2014 (Sweet 16) in the NCAAs, with Kentucky claiming survive-and-advance wins both times.

1. Back on top

The 2012 NCAA title featured more than its fair share of drama. Kentucky had to get past a second-round matchup with Royce White and Iowa State, played a run-and-gun masterpiece against Indiana in the Sweet 16, took down Baylor in the Elite Eight, and in-state rival Louisville in the Final Four.

But when the final seconds ticked off in New Orleans and the Wildcats took down Kansas, John Calipari had his vindication as a coach (undoing the memory of his heart-breaking Memphis title game loss to Self and Kansas in 2008), and Kentucky had its first NCAA title in 14 years.

Cover photo of Anthony Davis and Terrence Jones celebrating the 2012 NCAA championship courtesy of University of Kentucky Athletics

PREVIOUSLY IN TOP CATS:

How John Calipari revived Kentucky basketball, changed college basketball