March Madness quickly turned to March Sadness for UK. (Vicky Graff Photo)
There seems to be an interesting cultural battle going on within the University of Kentucky basketball program. As most UK fans know by now Kentucky coach John Calipari chose not to do his weekly call-in show on Monday night and instead chose to have a taped version broadcast because he was out recruiting. That taped version included some season-ending questions asked by Tom Leach, the veteran radio voice of the Wildcats.
The fact that Calipari skipped the call-in portion of the show and didn’t offer any earth-shattering changes to how the program will be run going forward seemed to stir the fan’s pot of disenchantment even more but that isn’t surprising considering some of the season-ending comments he has made in the past.
Later in the article, I’ll get to this year’s radio show comments but first I’d like to mention some of Calipari’s comments in the past.
After Kentucky’s historically disappointing loss to Wisconsin in the 2015 Final Four when it was 38-0, Calipari said about that team and the program in general at a 2015 fan meeting in Rupp Arena, “Last year we started the season (2015) with a goal. You may think it was to win a national title or win all the games, (but) it was to get eight players drafted. Well, how can you be about your team if you’re worried about getting players drafted? We kind of work it the other way. What are your dreams? What are you looking for? What are you trying to get out of life? How can we help you with that? For me, the mission for me is to be a vehicle to help others reach their dreams, to be the stone that creates the ripple in their lives that goes on and on and on. Now in our state, they want my mission to be, ‘Win national titles, win national titles.’ My mission is bigger than that.”
It doesn’t take much analysis of those words to see what Calipari’s agenda was in 2015 and what it still seems to continue to be. The Shaedon Sharpe saga during the season (will he play or won’t he play) continues to seem to reinforce that NBA first mentality. Sharpe could have helped the Wildcats down the stretch with a team that had nagging injuries and appeared to be worn out from playing too many minutes during the regular season but it didn’t happen.
Now contrast that Calipari thinking (getting players to be in the most successful individual position possible as they prepare for the NBA Draft) with what Kentucky Athletics Director Mitch Barnhart had to say after Calipari’s prerecorded call-in show.
Barnhart said about the goals for Kentucky basketball, “We’ve got a program that is built for March and built for championships. That is something we take great pride in.”
Barnhart went on to say, “But at the end of the day, we’re built for championships. That’s what this program is all about. It’s about winning SEC championships in the regular season, it’s about SEC titles in the tournament, it’s about championships in March and in early April. Deep, deep runs, that’s what we’re built for. We’re supposed to do those things and we fell short of that this year.”
Notice Barnhart didn’t mention the NBA Draft or ripples or individual player development or anything close to that. He said, “We’re built for championships.”
That seems to be a direct contradiction of what Calipari said back in 2015 and even what he implied concerning Shaedon Sharp this season. Any coach that “was built for championships” would have played Sharpe in the regular season when TyTy Washington and Savhir Wheeler went down with injuries.
If it didn’t work well it would have been ok because it was still the regular season. At least Calipari would have known if he had another weapon available or not for a team that was “built for long, long runs in March and April.”
Now, with this difference of opinions that seems to have broken out between the AD and the coach, what did Calipari have to say on his radio show Monday night?
“Historically, and this is not just at Kentucky, my teams played their best in March. We want to get back to that and if there’s stuff we can do different, I’ll look back. So there are things I need to evaluate. I always do that whether we win a national title, Final Fours, we lose in a final game, where do we evaluate?” Calipari said. “How do we take stock in everything we do throughout the whole program? Where do we need to go with everything to be where we want to be?”
So if you can take Calipari at his word then he intends to evaluate his process and make changes … maybe.
Either way, he didn’t emphatically say “my number one goal at Kentucky is to make a long, long run in March and April regardless of how many of my guys get drafted or not.”
Maybe that’s reading between the lines too much and maybe not. Each person can judge that on their own but it does seem to indicate that the sense of urgency that Barnhart seemed to imply with his comments was much greater than what Calipari indicated in his.
And I get it. Both men are competitive and want to win. There is no doubt in my mind that John Calipari wants to win championships. But, does he want them so bad that they override everything else he does, including ensuring that he puts multiple guys into the NBA each season. That is the 9 million dollar question.
So here’s the bottom line. Something has to give next season. Kentucky’s record in the NCAA Tournament from 2010 to 2015 is 22-4. The Cats’ record in the NCAA Tournament from 2016 to the present is 9-5. That doesn’t look like a program that is built for “long, long runs in March and April”. During those same time periods UK has had 25 players drafted from 2010-2015 and 18 players drafted from 2016- 2021.
So every UK fan can make their own judgments. Is Mitch Barnhart correct or is John Calipari correct? It will be interesting to see who eventually wins this cultural tug- of-war within the Kentucky Basketball program.
16 Responses
No more Championships in my life tile with a coach that cares more about a feeder for the Chinese NBA. I won’t be watching anymore and that’s hard because I’ve been a fan since Joe B took over.
Mitch and the UK administration’s fault.
Can’t Coach Cal is an employee. An employee has to acquiesce to his bosses or risk losing his job. Not only did this not happen, but he was rewarded with a lifetime contract. Classic tale waging the dog. CCC can be as onry as he wants to his bosses and the fans with no fear of consequence. He will not change either in behavior or coaching style! What I would like to know is at what point does the buyout get reasonable enough to get rid of him. — $40 mil, $20mil? Lean years coming I am afraid.
NEVER! He is the coach for so long as he wants to be the coach.
Cal thinks his way is the only way, but he is not the only coach that puts players in the NBA. His 1 NCAA Title doesn’t put his style ahead of anyone else because there are lots of coaches with 1 title. Jay Wright is just one example of a coach that does more with less than Cal does. He is consumed with the NBA and just wants to be a Farm Team. Yes, he has some good records at UK, but he also has some bad ones. We are also going to lose our standing as the winningest college team of all time under his direction.
Cal is too fixated on the idea that HIS way is the ONLY way!! Even when it hits him in the face that something isn’t working, it is not him that needs to change, it’s the players. He changes players every year, he changed assistants last year, basically getting the same results. There is only ONE common denominator!!!
There is something that Cal is doing that puts these players under a lot of stress where they cannot just play ball and relax. This year’s team was doing great, playing fast and loose, then all of the sudden, everything changed. Don’t bring up injuries. That happens to every team. The difference is some coaches build up and teach other players to fill in. If Cal doesn’t have players that can fill in on a regular basis, it is still his fault.
Cal says he wants his players to strive for their Best Version of themselves. That is hard to do when the coach does not design game plans around what each player does best.
This team fell apart when Calipari decided that Sahvir Wheeler was going to be his go to guy when KY needed a bucket. Wheeler is best suited to be a facilitator, not a scoring leader. Assists dropped off the chart, defense fell apart, and so did the chemistry of this team. Enough of the energy excuses. Houston lost their 2 best players at the beginning of the season and they are in the Elite 8. Kelvin Sampson made changes to his plan instead of making excuses. That’s the kind of coach we need. Calipari has become just as selfish and entitled as the OAD players he recruits.
This program was not properly run since Rick Pitino left. Calipari did catch some lightning in a bottle in 2012, but his methods of players first to the NBA has no served this program well given the talent that he has ushered through here since his arrival.
2010, 2011, 2014, 2015 were all years that the Calipari defenders point to but those all ended short of where the talent on the team should have ended for UK.
Since the 2015 Wisconsin meltdown, this program has been on a steady and sure decline. The middle of this season provided a glimmer of hope that this collection of players could possibly overcome the Calipari inertia, but as we all now know, it simply was not possible for this group of players to pull the Calipari dead weight into March much less into late March and early April
Calipari is and has been the problem.
I am glad that so many others are now beginning to speak up about this insanity the Calipari calls "Players First" but really means "UK NOT FIRST" even though his primary responsiblity is or should be to put UK FIRST!!!!!
It is an outrage to let players run the program, but this year we learned that a player’s parents, a player who has never stepped foot on the court during a real UK basketball game, are calling the shots.
This is disgraceful, and I doubt that Mitch Barnhart even knows what I am referencing as so disgraceful, which confirms that he is the master culprit and must go first.
As coaching gets more important at the end of the year when Kentucky goes up against better teams and coaches, Kentucky led by Calipari Falls Way Way short… The players start stressing out with him yelling on the sidelines not calling timeouts not having other players ready and continuing to work his dysfunctional offense… My time with Kentucky goes back to rupp’s runts and I cannot see how I move forward as a Kentucky fan with Calipari coaching.
Always so much window dressing with Calipari.. "Were Young" " This team is the oldest I’ve coached" " No tourney experience " So on ans so forth. Nobody wants to hear the same crap year after year. And to answer the question, The University of Kentucky and it’s history and its fan’s are built for Championships .. I’m not sold Cal is.
Lived my entire life following UK basketball. Graduated in the 90’s from UK.
While the politics that are flying around in (the comments) here are something I don’t care about. I do care about the program getting back to prominence.
Yes, I will say we have more players in the NBA than any other program to people but that’s because that’s all I have right now.
UCLA is so close to another championship. Horrifying. That will put the goal of UK having the most championships in my lifetime probably out of reach. And how are they doing it? With a UK transfer.
Kansas is probably, tonight, going to take the "most wins" title. Another horrifying proposition.
I remember 2015 as well. Where it was "NBA first – UK second" and it’s bothered me ever since. That needs to stop. It’s obvious some players get more playing time to show themselves off to NBA scouts when they’re just not having a good game. That’s done because he made a promise to them (while scouting) and he has to honor that promise (good) but he has a promise to the program as well that he’s not keeping (bad).
Calipari has to go.
The "timeout" has been discuss often. If you have a team that is well coached you don’t have to call timeout at end of game is my opinion. I don’t think these teams are well coached however.
While the "timeout" doesn’t bother me a well coached team should be able to handle a zone defense. This 2022 edition had "deer in the headlights" look when that happened against Saint Peter.
"In bound" plays on both offense AND defense are atrocious. Every time an opposing team in bounds the ball I look for the easy 2. Every time UK in bounds the ball it’s the same exact play executed every time.
I feel he has done a great job of recruiting but sits back and rests on his laurels and hopes their talent can win the games. If not, "well there’s next year".
We missed out on Kenny Payne unfortunately but there has to be some other coach out there that wants to play UK "run and gun" style of basketball and cares about winning championships. This is Kentucky, players want to play here. NIL is changing the landscape of college basketball. Kentucky players will make a lot of money playing here because we are on TV all the time. But if we keep up this mediocrity that is going to stop and we’ll never get that back. Not this time.
It’s pretty easy to see that mitch is just doing damage control and running cover for cal.
We may have been about winning championships and striving to be the best in basketball but those days are gone as long as cal is here along with his players to the nba first mentallity. And thanks to mitch and his idiotic contract extensions, cal will be here mutch longer than he should be
Unless you like glorified aau basketball, fans would be better served finding something else to enjoy other than wasting time on cals mockery of a once great program
Well you have to underatand he is a business man so im sure all the players he gets to the other side he has a contract with them for say the first four years at 10% just saying !
Interesting theory
Interesting theory for sure.
A theory that frankly had never occurred to me, and I think it is safe to say I have been one of his most vocal critics for the last 2 to 3 years.
A theory that if true would have to violate every idea of ethics, and would probably violate huge NCAA rules because he would in essence be functioning with a conflict of interest between his primary employer and the players, and functioning as a paid agent for each of these many future NBA stars.
I believe his "Players First" concentration poses the conflict of interest issues, but the financial interest in the outcome (the interesting theory part) certainly would move this into the NCAA violation consideration.
Surely, this lifetime contract has an escape clause in the event of NCAA violations.
One of the current criticisms I have been hearing in the aftermath of this year’s unacceptable finish is that Calipari did not use his bench effectively. When did he ever do that? Now Dontaie Allen has made it official he is moving on to greener pastures after having his talents squandered here for 3 years, and not just squandered but literally destroyed by this fraud of a coach.
Not using the bench?
As I sit here tonight watching Johnny Juzang and UCLA play, I wonder how much JOhnny Juzang could have helped UK not just the one year he was here and was relegated to pine time by this fraud, but have watched Johnny Juzang lead UCLA to the final four last year and put them into position for another trip to the final four this year.
Then there was Charles Matthews. Does anyone here who still wants to defend this fraud remember how Charles Matthews thrived at Michigan after this fraud relegated him to nothing but pine time during his one year at UK?
And, as shocking as these two examples should be to all UK fans who are now worried that this fraud failed to use his bench effectively this year, there are other examples of his failure to build a program at UK in favor of promoting his per-designated favorites to enhance their immediate NBA Draft stock.
That is NOT how to build a program. This is how to DESTROY a program.
How can you not be a Peacocks fan now? Those kids play the game right and play together. No egos, no OADs, no prima donna coach. They are so much fun to watch. I hope they can go all the way.
Coach Cal’s Recruiting Model is no longer working. You need to find some Players that can shoot the 3 and knock down free throws. As a follower of Kentucky Basketball for over 50 years, I also wish he would Recruit more Home Grown talent that has wanted to wear the Jersey their entire lives ! The “ One and Done “ era simply isn’t bearing fruit anymore. Build a Team that stays together for 3-4 years. Go Big Blue !!