SAD NEWS: Kentucky wildcats announced that Justin Edwards is leaving immediately after facing…

The Kentucky men’s basketball team handily defeated Mississippi on Tuesday night, 75-63, providing a rare feel-good moment in a season largely defined by poor defense, inexplicable losses at Rupp Arena and John Calipari’s typical mix of petulance and indignance in response to the pushback he’s getting from Big Blue Nation.

Calipari has been at Kentucky for 15 seasons now − far longer than even he would have expected. But he’s now locked into the job by the largesse of his contract and the lack of better options for a 65-year-old whose best coaching days are likely behind him.

And the plain reality that Calipari likely isn’t going anywhere anytime soon − he won’t be fired, and he isn’t the type to leave millions of dollars on the table − makes what happens over the next six weeks the most interesting story in college basketball.

Either Kentucky will conjure up a March run that heals some deepening wounds, or one of the sport’s preeminent programs will be stuck with a coach it no longer wants and a decline it does not deserve.

Make no mistake: At a time when parity rules the sport, the old guard of coaching stars has largely left the scene and the future NBA stars are not as relevant to college success as they once were, college basketball is pining for a Kentucky comeback.

But to this point, watching Calipari flail around on the sidelines without the answers to make it happen has been nothing short of sad.

Since losing to Wisconsin in the 2015 Final Four, ending the Wildcats’ chance of becoming an unbeaten national champion, Kentucky hasn’t been the same program and Calipari hasn’t been the same coach.

The erosion has happened for a lot of reasons. The biggest is probably that older, more physically rugged players have become more important than the one-and-done freshmen that were Calipari’s specialty.

There have been staff changes and some key, longtime Calipari assistants that were shoved to the side in an attempt to become more recruiting-focused.

There has also been a staggering stubbornness to adapt to modern basketball until this year, as Calipari has finally embraced the 3-pointer and better offensive spacing.