Kentucky Basketball: 20 candidates to replace John Calipari as Head Coach

Brad Stevens

Swinging for the fences is an absolute must if you’re Kentucky. Calipari had led two programs to the Final Four and coached in the NBA. Stevens has made a pair of Final Fours and has been even more prominent in the NBA. Could he actually be lured back to the college game by the Wildcats.

Stevens flew way under the radar as a guard at DePauw in the late 90’s before getting into coaching at Butler. After several years as an assistant, he became Butler’s head coach in 2007. Profound success followed, as Stevens took the Bulldogs all the way to the national title game in both 2010 and 2011. Two years later he made the shocking move to the NBA, spending eight solid years as the head coach of the Boston Celtics. He’d been the team’s president since 2021.

Obviously this depends on Stevens’ desire to get back into coaching and at the college level. He’s been entrenched in the NBA for more than a decade and has had multiple opportunities to jump back to the collegiate game before now. Kentucky is a different animal and could certainly afford him the landing he seeks, but it would be quite the jump from NBA president back to collegiate head coach. Still, not every coach makes back-to-back title games from the mid-major level; imagine him using Kentucky’s resources.