John Calipari offers coal miner's family tickets and VIP treatment

When Mollie McGuire answered the telephone connected Monday aft seeing a fig she didn't recognize, the caller connected the different extremity said, "Hello? This is John Calipari."

"I was stunned," McGuire told ESPN.com.

A photograph of McGuire's ember miner husband, Michael, had gone viral aft helium arrived astatine Kentucky men's basketball's Blue-White scrimmage successful Pikeville, Kentucky, connected Saturday with caller soot connected his look portion wearing his miner's enactment azygous and boots.

McGuire said her hubby near the mines and instantly drove to the crippled to beryllium with his woman and their 3-year-old son, Easton. Although helium was bushed aft a agelong shift, Kentucky's scrimmage was the archetypal unrecorded hoops crippled their lad had attended, and helium didn't privation to miss it.

McGuire said her hubby was unaware of the buzz astir the photograph due to the fact that he'd been successful the mines each day.

When Calipari reached Mollie McGuire connected Monday, helium offered her household tickets to an upcoming crippled and "VIP" attraction astatine Rupp Arena.

Calipari had arranged the scrimmage astatine Appalachian Wireless Arena to rise wealth for communities successful Eastern Kentucky that had been ravaged by flooding implicit the summer.

Mollie McGuire said her household avoided the devastation different families endured during flooding that killed 39 radical successful that portion of the authorities successful August. Her household -- they besides person a 1-year-old girl -- packed up bags of covering and gave them to household members and friends who'd mislaid everything.

She said Kentucky's fundraising scrimmage volition assistance those families.

"It's astonishing that these guys came present and raised money," she added. "It's going to enactment roofs implicit people's heads."