Last year’s national championship isn’t the only reason for Kentucky’s men’s basketball team’s opponents to be jealous. And all the recent NBA draft picks aren’t the only edge the SEC dynamo has in recruiting. Read more after the jump.
The elite program, which has perennially drawn the nation’s top prospects since head coach John Calipari took over the program in 2009, also has digs for its players that the majority of college students can only dream of, Calipari revealed in a video on his website.
Calipari gave viewers an inside look at the school’s freshly renovated Wildcat Coal Lodge, home to the basketball team starting this year.
The $7 million dorm is located next to Kentucky’s practice facility and athletic tutoring center. It includes a private chef, extravagant lounges and large dorm rooms intended for 7-footers.
There are flat-screen televisions scattered through the building displaying the players’ different schedules for practices, weightlifting and conditioning sessions and, yes, even classes. The lounges offer a dozen leather recliners around a large flat screen television and blue-felt pool tables matching the Kentucky championship banners and basketball murals.
All the dorm rooms are singles – no roommates – and set to fit rather large basketball players. The hallways feature a list of Kentucky players taken in the NBA Draft and former players currently in the league.
Though NCAA rules prohibit strictly athletic dorms, it is allowed because Kentucky houses non student-athletes here too. Rules state at least 50 percent of every dormitory floor has to be non-athletes.
Those regular students sure struck it rich.
