LEXINGTON, KY. ? When Kentucky officials met with coach John Calipari two years ago to talk about the program’s vacant head coaching position, they came armed with a sales pitch.

Turns out, they didn’t need one.

Instead, it was Calipari who ended up doing the selling. When university President Lee Todd and athletic director Mitch Barnhart outlined their vision for returning the Wildcats to glory, Calipari cut them short and assured them he was the man for the job.

“He said, ‘This is it: Notre Dame football and Kentucky basketball, and I want to be a part of Kentucky,”‘ Todd said. “I knew then we had the right man.”

Standing in a giddy postgame locker room on Sunday night after Calipari led the Wildcats to their first Final Four since 1998, Todd believes now more than ever the school made the right call.

“The more I see him on a daily basis, and (the way) he coaches and teaches players, the more proud I am of the decision we made,” Todd said.

Even if it came at a steep cost — eight years and $31.65 million — and a bit of a gamble. Calipari’s resume is brilliant but also pockmarked with a couple of NCAA splotches that are hard to ignore.

Kentucky plays Connecticut Saturday in Houston. In Calipari’s previous visits to the Final Four, with Massachusetts in 1996 and Memphis in 2008, were later vacated by the NCAA for rule violations. Though Calipari was not found at fault in either instance, the stigma is something he bristles at.

And it’s something that follows him wherever he goes.

Even as Calipari celebrated with his players on the floor of the Prudential Center on Sunday evening after joining Rick Pitino as the only men’s coach in NCAA history to lead three schools to the Final Four, a fan stood 20 feet from the floor and taunted Calipari, repeatedly shouting “it will just be vacated.”

The next week will give Calipari the stage he’s coveted for much of his career. He’s spent most of his 25-plus seasons in coaching as an outsider who thrived finding success in unlikely places. Now he’s winning at a place where it’s demanded by one of the most passionate fan bases in the country.

Calipari remains adamant that he’s done nothing wrong, but knows there is a faction that remains unsatisfied with his answers.

“We will all be judged 50 years from now,” Calipari said. “The good news is, there will be no emotion to it where someone wants to be nasty and mean; it won’t be here. It will be here’s the facts, here’s what he’s done.”

All Calipari has done at Kentucky is win and found a way to prosper in a seat that wore down Tubby Smith and chewed up Billy Gillispie in two short years.

Calipari has reveled in the spotlight.

He’s made Kentucky basketball fun again. Superfan Ashley Judd has returned to Rupp Arena. LeBron James has stopped by for a visit. And Jay-Z strolled into the locker room after the Wildcats secured their 14th Final Four appearance to congratulate the awestruck players.

Where Smith grew reticent and Gillispie outright rebelled against the role of ambassador that comes with the job, the 52-year-old Calipari has embraced it with a fervor of someone half his age.

His infectious energy — and his ability to lure the top high school players to Lexington — has returned the Wildcats to a perch the program has long considered its birthright.

Kentucky heads into Saturday’s matchup with Connecticut on a 10-game winning streak.

There will be plenty of chatter about Calipari’s path between now and the tip-off of the most important game at Kentucky in more than a decade. He’s ready for it.

“I would tell you I hope people look and say, ‘boy he does a good job with his kids and they get better and they play and they go on to good careers, whether it is basketball or business or education,”‘ Calipari said.