It’s no secret that John Calipari wants a new practice facility, but Kentucky’s coach went fully on the offensive Thursday morning. Following a film session in his hotel suite, Calipari unveiled an ambitious plan: He wants to build that facility in the center of campus and make it a grand, multi-use structure that also houses a sports science department, nutrition center and an interactive museum of the program’s rich history. And he’s not going to wait any longer for athletic director Mitch Barnhart to greenlight the project. If necessary, he’ll raise the money himself, and says his 50-some NBA Draft picks who’ve earned more than $2 billion as pros will contribute.

“This state deserves that,” said Calipari, who had to end practice early last week when the roof at UK’s Joe Craft Center, built in 2007, sprung a leak. That wasn’t the first time. “Everybody should be behind this. Our administration. Look, our baseball facility might be the nicest in the country, and I’m happy about that. Our football facility, we spent $200 million. Soccer, unbelievable. Now, the track — I love it. And now, I would say, the administration should be like, we’re doing this. How about the state? If this is the University for Kentucky, and it’s the basketball program for the state, which it is, how about the state says, ‘We’re in. We’re gonna invest.’ I’ll tell you right now, Anthony Davis gave $350,000 on a text to me (for flood relief). Do you know what our former players would do? They just gotta see it: What is it? So it’s the next challenge that we all have.”

Calipari pointed to what school president Eli Capilouto has done to transform the university’s campus by spending billions to build modern dorms, dining facilities and a palatial student center, among other massive infrastructure upgrades. He pointed to the complete overhaul of facilities for just about every other sport on campus. Calipari now believes it’s time to do the same for basketball.

“And the reason is, this is a basketball school. It’s always been that,” he said. “Alabama is a football school. So is Georgia. I mean, they are. No disrespect to our football team. I hope they win 10 games and go to bowls. At the end of the day, that makes my job easier and it makes the job of all of us easier. But this is a basketball school. And so we need to keep moving in that direction and keep doing what we’re doing.”

Calipari’s new talking point, certainly as it relates to this passion project of his, is University for Kentucky, not of Kentucky. There really isn’t a full-fledged museum of UK basketball anywhere in Lexington. Many of the program’s historic treasures, in fact, are stuffed in storage in the bowels of Memorial Coliseum.