What John Calipari Looks For in a Recruit

Tuesday, November 11th, 2008, filed in Athlete's Corner

At the end of October, Rivals.com launched its first online reality series called “Full Court Press.” The 10-part video series chronicles the beginning of the basketball season for the University of Memphis men’s team. The reality series takes a look at what goes on behind the scenes as the team prepares for its season. Each episode is 9-15 minutes long and a new one will be released each week through December 17.

Part of episode four of this series features a day in the life of coach John Calipari. Calipari has some interesting thoughts about what he looks for in a recruit that I wanted to share:

The whole point of when I recruit is that I’m trying to get to this kid’s heart. Now, when I was at UMass, I went into a kid’s home and he disrespected his mother. Right in front of me. I stayed in the home 12 minutes. Max. And I just said we’ll come back, and I looked at my assistant and said “You didn’t know this kid better than that?”

Kids with good hearts, they do dumb things just like everybody else. But, they handle things differently. They respect other people. They have a caring attitude, a caring heart. Those are the kids I try to recruit.

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