Ray Glier

Kentucky athletic director Mitch Barnhart needs to borrow your cell phone minutes. He has a long list of calls to make now that Tubby Smith has left town for Minnesota.

After all, it’s Kentucky basketball and the Wildcats have money. If you remember Nick Saban, you know college coaches crave the next big deal and the money.

Kentucky will call Florida’s Billy Donovan, but I wouldn’t waste the dime. Memphis’ John Calipari will be on the list, too, maybe right behind Donovan after Thursday’s win over Texas A&M.

Marquette’s Tom Crean is on the list, too, but UK better hurry. What if Pat Riley’s era with the Miami Heat is over acfter this season? The Heat could jump at Crean to pair with his college star, Dwyane Wade.

Texas A&M’s intense Billy Gillispie can match Kentucky fans’ passion and he should be on the list. Rick Barnes of Texas could be in line, too.

I wouldn’t start with any of them. The right coach to call is Jay Wright of Villanova.

Wright’s teams run. They shoot. He can recruit and Smith, for all his prowess with Xs and Os, was saddled with that ball-and-chain reputation of no longer being able to recruit.

At a place like Kentucky, that’s abominable.

If I heard it once, I heard it a thousand times, Tubbyball was a bore. UK fans wanted more Pitino ball and all they got was a grind. They got tired of it after 10 years, and I don’t blame them.

Wright, on the other hand, stirs it up on offense — and he can recruit. 

Just look at the class he assembled five years ago with Randy Foye, Allan Ray, Jason Fraser, and Curtis Sumpter. Villanova would have won the national title in 2006 if Fraser and Sumpter hadn’t been injured. He grabbed another prize in Scottie Reynolds once Kelvin Sampson left Oklahoma for Indiana.

Kentucky desperately needs recruits. If Randolph Morris goes pro there is one player of note left behind, wing guard Jodie Meeks.

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It is amazing to me that Wright reportedly doesn’t even make $600,000. That’s another reason he could end up at Kentucky. They can afford him and he can afford them.

Wright has charisma; he’ll manage the fuss around the Kentucky program. He knows the East Coast recruiting grounds and should thrive recruiting in Kentucky.

I covered Wright’s teams in a couple of NCAA Tournaments. They play with passion on defense and offense. Remember that Big East Tournament game with Georgetown where the Wildcats were getting buried in the first half (26-2) and they wouldn’t quit? They almost came back to win — which shows he has his players’ attention.

So why not Donovan?

Well, all season he has been talking about life’s lessons and loyalty and things that matter more than basketball. To leave the program he built for the harried pace of Kentucky would be contrary to things Donovan seems to have preached.

Also, if he didn’t feel appreciated at Florida, it would make sense for him to leave. But that’s not the case. Florida may be a football school and fans may care more about basketball in the Bluegrass State, but that’s no reason to leave a great thing.

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Calipari should be third on the list. Look at all that Memphis lost from last season and the Tigers are one win from the Final Four. He is an excellent coach and the baggage he hauled around from his days at UMass (violations) is long in the rear view mirror.

Calipari will listen to Kentucky. He listened to North Carolina State last April and even took the tour of the campus. He came back to Memphis and got a new deal worth $1.7 million through 2010-2011, according to the Memphis Commercial Appeal.

Calipari has the Memphis program revved up so it will take a terrific program and $2 million to get him away from Memphis. That would be Kentucky.

Crean seems to have a lot of traction. But he reportedly makes $1.7 million and signed a 10-year extension last fall, plus he is king at basketball-first Marquette.

Would he leave for Kentucky? Sure he would. The Big East, as it is, is unmanageable with so many teams and Marquette is out of the spotlight in that conference.

Kentucky should skip past Donovan, Calipari, and Crean. Maybe it pauses if Michigan State’s Tom Izzo shows interest.

But the right guy is Jay Wright.