John Calipari will have at least one vacancy to fill on his Kentucky staff this offseason

John Calipari will have some changes on his Kentucky basketball coaching staff again this offseason.

UK assistant coach K.T. Turner will soon be named the head coach at UT Arlington, returning to Texas after just one season with the Wildcats.

Turner joined Calipari’s staff last offseason, replacing Jai Lucas, who left Lexington to become an assistant coach at Duke after two years with Kentucky. Turner, like Lucas, was brought in partly due to his strong recruiting ties in Texas, which has been the state with the most five-star talent in recent years.

Calipari has had success recruiting Texas during his tenure at UK, bringing in such players as Julius Randle, De’Aaron Fox, Tyrese Maxey, PJ Washington, Aaron and Andrew Harrison and, most recently, Cason Wallace from the state. The No. 1 overall player in the 2024 class, Tre Johnson, is also from Texas and has Kentucky among his top options. Turner was helping lead UK’s recruitment of Johnson, a 6-foot-5 shooting guard from Dallas.

UK’s coaching staff also includes Orlando Antigua and Chin Coleman, who joined the Wildcats following the 2020-21 season, when Tony Barbee and Joel Justus both left for other jobs. Longtime college coach Bruiser Flint, who spent several years as an assistant under Calipari at UMass before succeeding the Hall of Fame coach there, is also on Kentucky’s staff with the title of associate to the head coach.

Another former Calipari assistant, Josh Pastner, was let go as the head coach of Georgia Tech over the weekend. Pastner was on Calipari’s staff at Memphis and was prepared to follow him to Kentucky in 2009 before the Tigers named him as their new head coach at age 31. He was the head coach at Memphis for seven seasons before spending another seven seasons at Georgia Tech, and his name is likely to be linked to the UK opening in the coming weeks.

Turner had a salary of $500,000 this season with two years remaining on his UK contract. He was set to make $525,000 next season and $550,000 for the 2024-25 season. He spent one year as an assistant coach at Oklahoma before coming to Kentucky, and he was the associate head coach at Texas the season before that.

Kentucky will play Providence in the first round of the NCAA Tournament on Friday night, and Turner is expected to remain with the Wildcats for the remainder of the postseason.