Following John Calipari’s teams as close as we do on a day-to-day basis, it’s easy to forget about the coaching legacy he is continuing to build. Every year he takes a young team to close to 30 wins and deep in the NCAA Tournament, his resume becomes more and more impressive.In an article from this weekend, Ron Chimelis of The Republican and masslive.com evaluated Calipari’s credentials for the Hall of Fame. Calipari got his first head coach at UMass back in 1988, so he will first be eligible to be elected in 2013. Chimelis does a good job of breaking down the cases for and against Calipari, but he wraps his piece up with his answer to the Hall of Fame question:

My answer is this: if my son were good enough to play, I would trust him in John Calipari’s hands, absolutely and without hesitation.Maybe he enter would the NBA Draft after his freshman year, if he were that good. If he wanted to chase down that degree later on, I know that no one would help him more than Coach Cal.I would vote for John Calipari. Yes.The legacy will wait. For now, he has his team, and on Saturday, it looked great.“I hope the NBA goes out (on its lockout) for three years,” Calipari said. “That way, I’ll have these guys for three years, and they’ll win a lot of titles. But all I really want is for our players to reach their dreams.”

LINK: CALIPARI BUILDING HALL OF FAME CASECalipari and his Cats returned to Lexington, Ky., after a nearly week-long trip to the East Coast for three games in six days. For their play in the Hall of Fame Tip-Off Tournament, which UK won, Doron Lamb and Michael Kidd-Gilchrist were each chosen to the All-Tournament team.