Where does John Calipari rank on basketball’s all-time list after 400th win at Kentucky?

John Calipari has his 400th win as Kentucky men’s basketball head coach.

Coach Cal earned that mark during Wednesday night’s 90-77 home win for the Wildcats over Mississippi State.

The triumph, which moves this year’s UK squad to 13-3 overall and 3-1 in SEC play, further solidifies Calipari’s distinct place in the college basketball history books.

For his coaching career — which spans appointments at Massachusetts, Memphis and Kentucky — Calipari holds an all-time head coaching record of 845-256 (76.7%).

Calipari’s 1,101 games as a head coach at the college level have broken down as follows:

▪ A 193-71 record (73.1%) across eight seasons at UMass.

▪ A 252-69 record (78.5%) across nine seasons at Memphis.

▪ A 400-116 record (77.5%) at Kentucky, where Calipari is in his 15th season as head coach.

These totals are according to Sports Reference, and don’t take into account the games that have been vacated by the NCAA while Calipari was the head coach at UMass and Memphis.

The following games have been scrubbed from Calipari’s official NCAA record:

▪ The 1995-96 UMass team had all five of its NCAA Tournament games vacated, which wiped four wins and one loss from Calipari’s official total.

This came after UMass star player Marcus Camby was found to have accepted gifts from a sports agent. The 1996 NCAA Tournament run for UMass ended with a Final Four loss to Kentucky’s national title-winning team known as “The Untouchables.”

▪ The 2007-08 Memphis team had all 33 of its regular season wins vacated, along with all six of its games from the NCAA Tournament. In total, this took away 38 wins and one loss from Calipari’s official total.

This came following NCAA rules violations that included a fraudulent SAT score provided by star player Derrick Rose, as well as free travel provided to Rose’s brother.

This accounts for a 44-game discrepancy between the Sports Reference numbers and the official NCAA totals for Calipari: The NCAA says Calipari only has 803 career wins and 254 career losses.

Where does John Calipari rank among all-time NCAA wins leaders?

Even using the NCAA totals that have taken 42 wins away from Calipari’s career record, the longtime coach is closing in on some rarefied air when it comes to the game’s great bench leaders.

Calipari has already cracked the top 15 of all-time coaching wins in NCAA history.

Currently, Coach Cal’s 803 NCAA-approved wins have him 14th on the all-time list. Next up is Rick Byrd, the longtime Belmont coach who has 805 career wins and is 13th on the all-time wins list.

As Calipari continues to win, he will keep edging closer to some iconic college basketball coaches on the list ahead of him.

Calipari is just three wins away from matching Eddie Sutton’s mark of 806 wins, which is 12th all time. Calipari is 27 wins away from tying for 10th on the all-time wins list with Jim Phelan (830 wins), who was the former head man at Mount St. Mary’s for an astounding 49 seasons.

Adolph Rupp is eighth on the all-time wins list with 876 victories. Dean Smith is seventh with 879 triumphs. The top five begins with former Kansas and North Carolina head coach Roy Williams and his 903 wins.

Of course, only two coaches have ever surpassed the 1,000-win mark in NCAA Division I men’s basketball: Jim Boeheim of Syracuse (1,015 wins) and Mike Krzyzewski of Army and Duke (1,202 wins).

Entering the 2023-24 season, Cliff Ellis — the former head coach at South Alabama, Clemson, Auburn and Coastal Carolina — was the only active coach at the NCAA Division I level with at least 800 wins in a Division I coaching career.

Ellis retired earlier this season in December with 831 career wins, which is ninth all time.

Calipari reached the 800-win mark with Kentucky’s Dec. 29 home win over Illinois State. With Ellis now retired, Calipari is the active coaching wins leader in NCAA Division I men’s basketball.

“I talked to Cliff last night, he’s a good friend. That means I’m old, that’s what that means. Cliff Ellis is one of the neatest guys, and a hell of a coach now,” Calipari said last month after UK’s win against Penn, which was played just a few days after Ellis retired.

At the same time, several active coaches are close behind Calipari, who turns 65 next month.

Rick Barnes, 69, and Bill Self, 61, are the two head coaches currently on the sideline who are closest to Calipari’s win total.

Barnes currently has 792 career wins from his time at George Mason, Providence, Clemson, Texas and now Tennessee. It seems likely that at some point this season, the Volunteers’ head coach will become the second active coach (along with Calipari) to reach 800 career wins: He’s only eight victories away from that mark.

Self officially has 787 career NCAA-approved wins across his tenures at Oral Roberts, Tulsa, Illinois and now Kansas. This total took a hit in October when Kansas was ordered to vacate 15 wins from the 2017-18 season, during which the Jayhawks reached the Final Four.

This came after it was determined that illegal payments were made by a former Adidas associate to former Kansas player Silvio De Sousa.

So for now, Calipari is the only active Division I men’s basketball coach with 800 or more wins, although he will likely have Barnes and Self for company in this regard in a few months’ time.

How many more wins can John Calipari get at Kentucky?

Calipari currently has 803 wins that are recognized by the NCAA, and is only 27 away from cracking the top 10 all-time for NCAA Division I men’s basketball head coaches.

Cal is 73 wins away from matching Rupp’s career total, and 197 victories away from his 1,000th win as recognized by the NCAA.

Calipari is under contract at Kentucky through the 2028-29 season.

Through 13 completed seasons at Kentucky (excluding the COVID-affected 2020-21 campaign and the current 2023-24 season), Calipari has averaged 29 wins per season with the Wildcats.

If you apply 29 wins per season through the rest of Calipari’s current contract at UK — which means awarding him and Kentucky 29 wins for each of the 2023-24, 2024-25, 2025-26, 2026-27, 2027-28 and 2028-29 seasons — this would put Calipari at 964 career NCAA-approved wins by the time his current UK deal ends.

This would leave Calipari a little more than one season short of joining Boeheim and Krzyzewski in the 1,000-win club.