Jay Wright gives ‘firm no’ to potential Kentucky opening

The former Villanova coach says he enjoys his new job as a CBS college basketball analyst.

Jay Wright says that he still has a lot to learn about how to be a full-time college basketball analyst: "It's like being in school again."Read moreJeremy Freeman/WBD Sports

Published April 9, 2024, 8:48 a.m. ET

Kentucky coach John Calipari appears set to take the head coaching job at Arkansas, leaving one of the most prestigious college basketball jobs in the country open.

It seems like every big-name coach in the country has been brought up as a possibility for Kentucky, from UConn’s back-to-back national championship winner Danny Hurley to Alabama’s Nate Oats to, of course, retired Villanova coach Jay Wright.

But Wright, who serves on CBS’s March Madness broadcast team, indicated on TNT ahead of the national championship game that he would not be taking the Kentucky job. The comment came after fellow broadcaster Kenny Smith said if it were him doing the hiring, he would ask Wright to come back to coaching college basketball and that he still only addresses Wright as “Coach.”

“I am so happy doing this,” Wright, 62, said of broadcasting. “I’m telling you this right now, I love doing this. I like being Kenny’s coach. Even though I’m not [Charles Barkley’s] coach yet. I haven’t earned that. I’ve haven’t earned that yet. But I love being Kenny’s coach.

“And I say this, Chuck, to your point about John running his course, what John Calipari has done in Kentucky, it’s not just the recruiting, the Final Fours. It’s getting guys to the NBA, taking care of their families. It’s their Big Blue Midnight Madness, having Drake come in, having the top recruits in the country every single year. That program is known worldwide.”

Replacing a legendary coach at a blue blood program is a tall task — just ask Wright’s own replacement, Kyle Neptune.

“The guy that replaces [Calipari] is going to be in a really difficult position to cover all the areas of college basketball,” Wright said. “He’s a college basketball genius. What he did in recruiting, and bringing in all those pros, and all those guys that come back to Kentucky, makes that program as strong as ever.”

When pressed by reporter Seth Davis if that was a “firm no” for him on that job, Wright confirmed that it was. Wright retired from Villanova in 2022 after 21 seasons at the helm of the Wildcats, winning national titles in 2016 and 2018. He was inducted into the Naismith Memorial Basketball Hall of Fame in 2021.

“I started to feel like I didn’t have the edge that I’ve always had,” Wright said in his postretirement news conference in 2022.

Wright grew up in the Philadelphia area as a Villanova fan and still lives in Southeastern Pennsylvania. He currently serves as a special assistant to the president at the university.