Is John Calipari pointing west?

There is a great deal of buzz in the college basketball world about Kentucky head coach John Calipari possibly being the next UCLA coach.

According to various sources, the Hall of Fame coach is showing what some have described as "serious interest" in coming to Westwood.

Calipari's credentials are impressive, and get him placed in the rarified air of elite college coaches today. He's won a national championship, been to three other Final Fours and five Elite Eights, while being named the Naismith College Coach of the Year three times. He was elected into the Basketball Hall of Fame in 2015.

It's known that Calipari has always liked the UCLA job, loving Los Angeles and the lifestyle.

UCLA, in doing its due diligence since firing Steve Alford on New Year's Eve in December, has had time to kick the tires on all the big-named coaches in the game to gauge interest. Calipari was one who seriously reciprocated.

Calipari wouldn't come cheap for the Bruins, with the 60-year-old coach making over $7 million a year. Kentucky and Nike, too, aren't going to let him get away without a fight in terms of making his deal at Kentucky and with the shoe company even more lucrative.

It has to be weighed that Calipari, in the past, has leveraged interest from other programs and the NBA just to sweeten his Kentucky salary.

He also has some baggage, with NCAA sanctions attached to his early tenures at Massachusetts and Memphis.

On the other hand, it's compelling to think about the teams Calipari, who is a master recruiter, could put together at UCLA. Calipari is considered one of the best recruiters in college basketball, being very successful in getting elite recruits to want to play for him, no matter the competition on the bench at Kentucky. He, too, has been a master at continuing to turn in highly competitive Kentucky teams despite the increased turnover in his program due to early-NBA jumpers. While many consider him a roll-out-the-ball type of coach, he's actually under-rated in his coaching acumen and in-game tactical ability.

The talk in college basketball recruiting circles is that Calipari taking the job at UCLA would give the Bruins an immediate leg up with some of the elite 2019 prospects still available.

Looking at the bigger picture, Calipari coming to UCLA would undoubtedly be a development of seismic proportions in college basketball.