Calipari: N.C. State's best non-hire ever

N.C. State wasn’t able to pry coach John Calipari away from Memphis three years ago.

It might have been the most fortunate non-hire in the school’s history.

Calipari, who seemed incredibly close to being N.C. State’s basketball coach but accepted a raise to stay at Memphis, now has both his trips to the Final Four vacated.

The NCAA announced Thursday that Memphis will have to forfeit all of its 38 wins and its appearance in the NCAA championship game in 2007-08. Memphis was found to have given approximately $1,713.85 in impermissible travel benefits to the brother of a player.

On May 5, 2008, the SAT’s testing service canceled the test score of a player on the 2007-08 team, making him ineligible. The player in both violations has been identified in published reports as Derrick Rose.

Apologists for Memphis will say it’s not fair for the NCAA to hold the school to be held responsible for a test score that wasn’t invalidated until after the season was over. They will say the NCAA clearinghouse’s approval of Rose’s transcript should absolve Memphis of responsibility.

But NCAA rules are clear that schools, not the clearinghouse, are held responsible for correctly determining initial eligibility. School officials have long been aware of this fact.

Calipari’s supporters will correctly say that the NCAA didn’t consider any allegations against him and made no finding against him personally. Paul Dee, the former Miami athletics director who chairs the NCAA’s Committee on Infractions, said Calipari was helpful and responsive when he appeared before the committee.

The only effect this case will have on Calipari is to expunge the wins and Final Four appearance from his record that season. So now Calipari has Final Four trips vacated in 2008 with Memphis and 1996 with Massachusetts.

“Whenever you have a situation where you have a penalty that not only affects the team’s records but also the individual’s personal record, you do have an impact on that particular individual and their career, that is to be sure,” Dee said.

Except for bad publicity, though, there doesn’t seem to be much of an impact on Calipari. He has escaped Memphis for Kentucky in time to put together one of the best recruiting classes of all time and build for what could be more trips to the Final Four.

He might have built N.C. State into a Final Four-caliber team, too, and the Wolfpack is a long way from that status under coach Sidney Lowe. But with the way Calipari leaves NCAA sanctions in his wake, N.C. State is better off without him.

Ken Tysiac