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NEWS

Fantasy Experience Auction Raises $128k for Charity
Friday, September 14, 2012

This weekend’s Kentucky basketball events — the UK Alumni Charity Game and John Calipari Basketball Fantasy Experience — were already slated to make hundreds of thousands of dollars for charity.

That wasn’t enough for John Calipari.

Hosting the Fantasy Experience participants at his house Friday night, Coach Cal took his charitable attempts one step further by holding an auction with ProCamps, which is helping Calipari run the Fantasy Experience.

Auctioning off experiences like serving as an assistant coach for a day, court-­‐side seats at a Charlotte Bobcats game with Calipari and a suite for the first Kentucky game of the year at the new Barclays Center in Brooklyn, N.Y., Calipari and Co. raised approximately $128,000 in 20 minutes, all of which will go to charity.

Calipari helped ProCamp’s Gregg Darbyshire with the auctioneer duties while former coaches and current ESPN analysts Paul Biancardi and Dino Gaudio encouraged participants to bid. Calipari would often interrupt the bidding by throwing in a sweetener.

Former Kentucky star Michael Kidd-­Gilchrist was on hand and made a bid during the auction.

Following Saturday’s UK Alumni Charity Game at Rupp Arena, UK will donate 100 percent of the proceeds from the game to charity, which you can read more about here. UK is expected to raise a few hundred thousand dollars for charity.

Tickets are still available for Saturday’s game at the Rupp Arena box office, online at Ticketmaster.com, at any Ticketmaster Outlet or by phone at 1-­800-­745-3000. Use the discount code TWENTY to receive $20 lower‐level tickets.

Earlier Friday, after a visit from ESPN commentator Dick Vitale, Coach Cal and his Basketball Fantasy Experience donated $25,000 to the V Foundation, a charitable organization dedicated to saving lives by helping to find a cure for cancer.