Kentucky Basketball: 8 potential candidates to become next HC if John Calipari leaves

Bruce Pearl

Love him or hate him, and you can bet it’s leaning more towards hatred in Kentucky, Pearl is a big name in college basketball. No stone can be left unturned and that means we’re looking at a third different current head coach of an SEC program for this potential vacancy, but certainly a man with a winning pedigree.

Pearl played and coached under Tom Davis at Boston College, Stanford, and Iowa before winning a D2 national title in his first head coaching gig at Southern Indiana. He then led Milwaukee on a Sweet Sixteen run as a 12-seed in 2005 before spending six solid years at Tennessee. Pearl bounced back after recruiting violations with success at Auburn. This last decade has been prosperous for the Tigers, highlighted by 2019’s trip to the Final Four.

Pearl is slightly older than most of these candidates and it’s hard to imagine him being the long-term candidate for the Wildcats. There’s also the issue that that Final Four run is the only time Auburn has gotten out of the opening weekend in the last decade. Pearl completely built basketball success at Auburn and is an attractive candidate to win a lot of games at Kentucky, but he’s sitting at home right now after losing to Yale and that’s not the kind of thing Wildcats fans want to see repeated.