John Calipari (born February 10, 1959) is an American basketball coach. Since April 2009, he has been the men's head coach at the University of Kentucky. He is also currently acting as head coach of the Dominican Republic national basketball team
Calipari is the former head coach of the University of Memphis Tigers, the University of Massachusetts Minutemen, and the National Basketball Association's New Jersey Nets. He is the only coach to direct three different colleges to a No. 1 seed in the NCAA Tournament, although two of those appearances (1996 at UMass and 2008 at Memphis) have been officially vacated by the NCAA. Calipari is also one of only two coaches to direct three different schools to a Final Four (1996- UMass, 2008- Memphis, 2011, 2012- Kentucky), with the UMass and Memphis appearances later being vacated by the NCAA. As a result, he is the only head coach to have a Final Four appearance vacated at more than one school, although Calipari himself was not personally implicated by the NCAA in either case. As a college coach, Calipari has 18 20-win seasons (17 official), 8 30-win seasons (7 official), and has been named National Coach of the Year 3 times.
In the 2011–12 NCAA Division I men's basketball season, Calipari led Kentucky to its 8th NCAA Tournament Championship, and the first of his career.