Morgantown, West Virginia – Following Oscar Tshiebwe’s decision to leave West Virginia and commit to play for Kentucky, Bob Huggins was asked if John Calipari called him to ask about his former player.
Huggins replied, “No, I haven’t talked to him. He texted me. He didn’t ask me anything.”
Huggins, at the time, appeared to be very disappointed that his “great friend” Calipari didn’t bother to pick up the phone and speak with him before reaching out to Tshiebwe.
Now, Calipari is trying to clarify why he didn’t call Huggins: “Bob and I have talked. I texted him. The people that we had talked to with Oscar were Bob Huggins fans, so that’s why I never picked up the phone and called him. But since then we have talked by phone.”
To be clear, these people that “were with Oscar” when Calipari spoke to Tshiebwe, are likely the very same people that pushed him to leave West Virginia and are almost certainly not “fans of Bob Huggins.”
Even if that was the case, if Calipari considered Huggins such a good friend, he clearly should have had the decency to pick up the phone and speak with him before trying to poach his former player.
Calipari went on to say, “Just being in that environment, being coached by Bob, who – in my mind – is a Hall of Famer. Having that background before he comes here is good.”
In the ugly world of college basketball, John Calipari is the type of coach that will do and say anything to get players to go to Kentucky, even if it means risking a decades-long “friendship” with another coach.
John Calipari says Oscar Tshiebwe will arrive in the coming days, ready to make impact in practice https://t.co/9oSJUBkH6X
— Jack Pilgrim (@JackPilgrimKSR) January 15, 2021
