In the days and months since UConn (again!) cut down the nets and hoisted its second consecutive national championship trophy in as many years, this last one from Glendale, Arizona, college basketball’s gears have grinded nearly nonstop with a churn of drama mixed with coaching searches and NIL developments.
The sport never sleeps – not even in May, Jon Rothstein! – but you’d be forgiven if you haven’t kept up with every relevant (and possibly less relevant) development in between.
That’s why we’re here.
But as the calendar has flipped to September and the season fast approaches – the fall semester has already started and hoops will happen in ~two months – it’s time now to get up to date on some of the biggest developments of the offseason and shake out who came out of the dust as the winners and losers from it all.
Let’s do it – and we’ll start here with the Bluegrass State, which on its own delivered enough fireworks to take up multiple spaces below.
Losers: Blues in the Bluegrass State
John Calipari’s stunning decision to leave Kentucky for Arkansas was effectively the first real news of the offseason. Calipari’s move didn’t necessarily come as a surprise, and truth be told, it seemed like a change was needed both for him and the UK program. But any time you lose a coach with a Hall of Fame resume it’s hard to see it as anything other than a loss.
That set up the state – both Louisville and Kentucky, which both opened – to be universally rejected by Baylor coach Scott Drew in a span of weeks. Drew was pursued hard by both schools but ultimately decided to stay with the Bears, spurning two other major programs in the Bluegrass State with tremendous resources and a commitment to winning.
Both programs seem to have rebounded well after the rejections – we’ll get to those in a bit – but Drew stiff-arming Louisville and Kentucky was a surprising turn of events that…
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