John Calipari still believes he has the team to make a big NCAA Tournament run. (Vicky Graff Photo)
It takes more than an SEC Tournament loss to take away John Calipari’s March swagger.
“We had three guys go 1-for-17 (from the field) and still could have won. There’s nobody that wants to play us.” Calipari said after Saturday’s loss on the UK Radio Network. “If we had won that game, Vegas (oddsmakers) would have had us as the No. 1 team to win the whole thing (NCAA Tournament).
“We are going into the tournament there ain’t a whole lot of teams who are going to want to play us.”
Is that just Calipari saying what he thinks his team needs to hear for its confidence or is he that confident in the Cats going into NCAA play? My guess — he still believes that much in his team.
“I think we’re in really good shape. We got three guys at every position, so what I told them — I was going to tell them — and I did tell them before this tournament, you don’t have to play great because I’ll just play somebody else,” Calipari said. “I don’t even have to get mad. If you’re not ready to go, I’m just going to play somebody else. Just be ready next game.
“Then I was going to say, the only way that doesn’t work is if eight of you play like crap. Then it doesn’t matter if we have a lot of guys. If you have a bunch of guys that didn’t play well, you’re not winning. We were 2-for-20 (on 3-pointers). I think a couple of them were air balls from good shooters, like the best shooter (Kellan Grady) in the conference.”
Calipari said as poorly as UK shot, it had a chance when it cut the lead to six points and then made three straight mistakes.
“You can’t win national championships on plays like that. You cannot because a good team will make you pay just like Tennessee made us pay. You can’t, and they were our mistakes,” Calipari said.
“A back door, we were running a play. The guy went the wrong way. That like a quarterback goes to hand it off to the running back that went that way in a national championship game. They clobbered the quarterback. He fumbles, and they run, and you just lost the national title because you went the wrong way? We did one of those. It’s a good lesson for us.”
Especially since it didn’t cost UK a national title like a mistake in any game now could.
4 Responses
Tennessee, Arkansas, Auburn, LSU, Duke, and even Alabama would welcome a matchup with Kentucky now. I bet Kansas would like to see us again too. Calipari is talking like a coach who knows his team is heading in the wrong direction. He needs to shutup and focus on getting his team ready to play instead of putting bulletin board material out there. Oh, I left out a team who wants to play us more than anyone else…Murray State.
Could not disagree more, whodat! Coach Cal is feeding our team much needed confidence. He’s giving them a strong reputation to live up to. That’s good coaching. Whatever happens, we will perform better if the players know their coach has their back. Cal does. He isn’t saying these things for the fans to feel better.
John, if a team needs confidence building at this time of the season, they are already toast. Butter it any way you want, but its still toast.
Kentucky is the 2nd or 3rd most efficient team for the season. That does not happen by accident, and its significance should neither be ignored nor discounted.
That very attribute puts this UK team on the radar screen of teams in the hunt. It does not mean UK will win the championship, of course. k
The #1 most efficient team has won 11 of the last 20 championships, and the #2 and #3 teams have won another 6 between them.
That leaves 3 out of 20 in which an outlier team survives the ordeal and hoists the trophy at the end. That is 3 wins by the field of 65 teams, and 17 wins from the top 3 teams. I much prefer for UK to be the most efficient team, as it was in 2012 and 2015, but if not #1, then #2 or #3 will keep them in the hunt.
As for the way this team finished the season, that is cause for concern, but it is correctable, and I expect Calipari and his staff to make those corrections for this final push.
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