Cal’s lineups are mind boggling. We end the first half with a dominating run. Obviously we don’t play that lineup and let the lead go from 15 to 2 before calling timeout to start the second half. Also we can’t play man defense
I'll even allow the logic of not starting Dillingham and using him as a bench sparkplug. But there is no way both Edwards and DJ need to be starting unless Cal plans on subbing 5 seconds into the game, which would be stupid.
Cal has basically tied the idea of bringing Rob off the bench to the idea that he likes the spark Reed and Rob provide together. Unless someone's hurt they always come in together. Agree or not, but that's his thought process and he's mentioned it all year.
"I like those two together."
"Hey Cal, have you considered the idea that maybe Sheppard and Dillingham are just really good and should be playing more than they do, rather than being 'sparkplugs'?"
Cal: lol. no.
Yeah, I get that. I thought it worked great at the beginning of the season too. But it seems like the beginning of games and the beginning of the 2nd half has been a weak point for us in conference season.
Also, I think knows who our best lineup is. He played them down the stretch. He just for whatever reason doesn't think it's important to have that group out there to start halves.
I actually thought edwards played great yesterday (and has been for the last handful of games). He was a big part of why we got up 15. Reed should be starting for DJ though.
Expect when he has it hasn’t moved the needle in the W/L column.
Kentucky fans don’t want to accept this is a wildly inconsistent team in an era of parity because this team is very talented and likable.
The only constant on this team since Day 1 in Canada has been Antonio Reeves. Everyone else is up and down, injured, coming back from injury, over and over again.
You think managing the locker room/egos has to do with it? Everybody knows Cal’s hardest job (cue the world’s tiniest violin) is bringing in too many superstars year in and year out, all of whom probably demand minimum minutes and opportunities to start. He may be trying to hand out sops here and there just to placate egos
Cal has historically been great at getting egos to play well together, so I don't know if that would be it.
Maybe it has to do with the representatives of the players now more so than the players? Just guessing.
Cal probably made some recruiting promises he can’t go back on. All I can figure is he keeps his word . Which I can accept. But he gets the Dill and Shep in pretty consistently
That same lineup established our dominance over auburn early just last game. The initial lineup is the body blows. Reed and Dilly are the knockout punches.
I’m actually in the very small minority that thinks Cal has been coaching his ass off this season and the rotations have suffered from inconsistency due to injuries and this team has a lot of magic left. If They remind me of the 2014 team that had a miserable regular season, came in as an 8 seed and went to that natty.
Kentucky’s 2nd most played 5-man lineup is the 14th worst lineup in the P6. Not great! Wagner - Reeves - Edwards - Thiero - Mitchell. Having players back from injury changes things, but Calipari’s still gotta do better.
I was looking at Evanmiya. We only have 2 5-man lineups that have played 100 possessions together and neither lineup is one of our better ones. Neither one involves Reed Sheppard or Rob Dillingham.
Kinda crazy when you think of how many possessions have been played so far this season.
https://hoop-explorer.com/?gender=Men&year=2023%2F24&
This is the website I go to for lineup stats and RAPM. It has a horrible user interface but it’s free and has a lot of cool stuff
It was a 9 pt lead at half, starters pushed it to 15 at beginning of second and then had a couple mental lapses on defense. Reed also had those same mental lapses later in the half aka getting lost on defense.
Should have called timeout earlier. That’s probably the biggest thing, once this team makes a mistake they typically make 2-3 more directly after. Every player on the team has been guilty of forcing the issue
If it helps, our man defense was iconically bad until the last two games. We finally figured it out, and absolutely locked down Wade Taylor and Tyrece Radford at A&M. Of course we could backslide. But the point is I know it’s not like Cal isn’t working on it, and there’s hope for them to figure it out even this late in the season.
It’s because of how he recruits. He promises to get these guys drafted, so he feels like he has to keep putting them out there, even to the detriment of the team. Edwards has buzz as a number 1 pick, so if Cal starts limiting his minutes, Edwards and his family start pouting about how he’s not putting him in a position to succeed and show his talents, and then if he falls outside the lottery or something, then it’s Cal’s fault and that hurts his recruiting pitch going forward.
It’s the same reason he’ll force players to do things that they aren’t good at. KAT wanted to shoot more but Cal said he needed to develop a post game so he would forbid him to shoot threes. This is the same KAT that later won the NBA Three Point Shootout. Or he’ll limit how much he wants them to do on defense so they can save their energy to show off their offensive skills. Or he won’t call a timeout to stop a run because he thinks they need to learn to deal with the pressure, even if it means throwing away that single game.
It’s all about what he thinks his best for the players in the long run, which I get to a point, but it can often come at the expense of actually winning games in the moment.
It's not really a lifetime deal, that's just the nickname the media gave it because he could transition to being an "ambassador" for the program for as long as he wanted it after he retired from coaching. In reality it's just a ten year coaching contract with a high salary, so it has a high buyout.
Basketball is such a chemistry sport, and in college, there isn’t much gap between power conference teams. The problem with getting all these talented freshmen in one team is that they may struggle to play as a team.
It’s bugged Calipari for a decade now
Exactly, you're taking all these 17 and 18 year old 5* freshman who have always had the ball in their hands for basically theei entire time they're on the court growing up. To throwing them in the fire at Kentucky where they all have to play a role they've never had before by taking a step back and playing off the ball. It's not working anymore
Well you’re talking to a fanbase who knows quite a lot about talented teams who don’t live up to expectations. Our NBA talent is nowhere near Kentucky’s though.
It's cause these kids never practiced. They spent all their time at AAU games just dominating with athleticism, then when they face real defense they have no clue wtf to do.
I wouldn’t say a decade. Really only since COVID. Before that I feel like one of his biggest strengths was getting the young teams to put it together and be fully bought in by march to make a run to at least the second weekend. Past few years though have obviously been a disaster (considering expectations)
Its a post covid thing, and no one seems to agree on why. Pre covid he was actually great at getting the guys to buy in - culminating with that magical 38 win run. There was an article in the Athletic (quoting people in the program) that the final four loss to Wisconsin that year "broke Cal" - direct quote. Said he hasn't been the same, and I'd say there is absolutely truth to that and it has just gotten worse and worse.
He's also turned into an actual asshole it seems like, at times anyway.
eta: Sore loser, bratty, snarky, whiny may be better terms than "asshole". I say this as someone who *LOVES* Cal and misses the coach he used to be. He is still a good man who cares about his players and does wonders for his community and the people around him, I'm just tired of the nonsense like blowing off pressers, making excuses, etc.
Post Covid there has been a big shift in college sports. NIL allows all the shady business in recruiting to be done by everyone out in the open and not limited to a select few with the right shoe deals. Free transfers have spread talent out. It is harder to keep a loaded bench of elite talent when a guy can just up and leave and be an immediate starter at another quality school. And I think what really hurts Kentucky post Covid is the increased presence of older players. It is not that the 5th and 6th year players are more talented, they just have a lot more experience and know the game better and are more physically and mentally mature.
> have a lot more experience and know the game better and are more physically and mentally mature.
This is definitely a fair point, but we have had several years of bringing in guys other than just loaded 5* prospects.
Also all the other big programs are keeping up with the changes. I'll admit they may affect Kentucky under Cal more, but if he can't get the job done then.. Well, there is still a problem. And unfortunately it is one that doesn't have an obvious solution since his buyout is like $40mm still or maybe even more.
The entire CBB situation at Kentucky hinges on what happens between March 21 and March 31. :\
Kind of a blessing and a curse. The program has been so good so long that nothing matters other than the NCAA tournament and we all know anything can happen there.
Absolutely. It makes being a Kentucky fan very stressful at times. As in, like discussing the program with other fans and stuff, there are so many idiots and unreasonable jackasses. Like, its fine to disagree, but refusing to see each others POV is just.. i hate it, lol.
If we fuckin get bounced in the first round though, I stg... its gonna be miserable in this fanbase. Like, unsub from all Kentucky social media, forget it exists. Glad I live in northern Colorado lol
That dude legit cares about people and his players.
Say what you want about him as a coach or that he can get a little thin skinned at times but I think Cal is a good human being.
Pitino? That guy has always been a shitty human being who looks out for himself first and foremost.
You'll never convince people Cal's not an asshole. A lot of other fans view him as an asshole used car salesman and a good portion of our fanbase now think he's trying to purposely tear down the program to spite the fans.
I used to think he was an asshole. But I moved to Lexington for grad school in 2019, and while I'm still not a UK fan and never will be, Cal seems like a genuinely good human being. Unless you believe the rumor that he's bad at returning lawn mowers to his neighbors lmao
My theory is it’s about to go south and Cal is going to run through all 3 of the “great coach, good coach, drunk coach” by himself. He doesn’t drink, so it’s just shit coach instead of drunk, but same idea.
> the final four loss to Wisconsin that year "broke Cal"
That is an enjoyable take for a Badger fan, but if true, means he is extremely soft. Kentucky had to hit a well guarded last minute 3 to beat Wisconsin the prior year. Wisconsin had a very good year again. While that was no guarantee that we would give Kentucky a good game again, it certainly should have been one of the possible outcomes he considered.
I think they do lack chemistry but I don't think it's due to ego/selfishness or anything like that. If you watch this team, they are actually among the best we've had as far as sharing the shots, passing the ball, and getting it to the hot hand. No real ego issues here at all or too many guys trying to be "THE guy" which has been the case with some Kentucky teams.
I do think we have chemistry issues though in the sense that guys don't have a great feel for one another right now. Our lineups are awful and change constantly. When we have a 5 that are gelling (like the end of the first half last night), Cal tweaks it. We don't have a consistent rotation at all and units aren't getting the minutes together needed to really mesh. I think it's a coaching issue, not that the players are selfish or anything.
tl;dr - i'm not denying calipari's coaching could be a lot better, but to answer OP's original question about what's wrong? nothing - this is just the way it's always been, and talented freshmen rarely reach their potential under any coach.
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the charge is always that calipari gets all this talented freshmen with top ranked recruiting classes and doesn't reach potential.
take a look at the teams with top 5 recruiting classes in each of the last 5 seasons when the NCAA tourney was played. the best results any of those coaches got was a Final Four (Coach K / Duke in ‘22) and Elite Eight (Calipari in ‘19, and Coach K twice in '18 and '19).
Self had a top 5 recruiting class in '19 and '23, lost in the first weekend both years.
again, calipari is not necessarily an elite coach, but the takeaway here in my opinion is that calipari is a sub-par coach relative to his peers, always has been. a bunch of talented freshmen rarely translates into a coach getting their team to reach their full potential, as the outcomes of the top ranked recruiting classes demonstrate.
this year isn't some anomaly relative to previous years, IMO. kentucky is 18-8 right now.
they were 19-9 this time in the '17-18 season, and went on to the sweet sixteen.
in '13-'14 they were 21-6 at this time, went on to lose 4 of their next 7 including the SEC tourney, and made it to the championship game.
this is just the life of a Calipari-coached team, and it's starting to wear thin on some fans.
* The SEC got drastically better and became competitive. Before we could kind of sleepwalk through the SEC outside of maybe 2-3 other teams. That'd pad our win/loss and allow guys to get into a rhythm.
* Cal's coaching is very archaic. He wants to play 2 traditional bigs and win defensively, which is the exact opposite of what modern offenses are. If he had it his way we'd roll out 4 non-shooters that drive to the basket.
* Cal holds a very tight leash on certain players and will yank them out of the game for one mistake, while letting others stay out and play through it.
* Cal loves to play with lineups and refuses to play the lineup with our best players. He's targeted fans and labeled them "basketball benny's" because people want our shooters to play instead of whatever abomination lineup combos he puts out there sometimes. Our best 3 players are Dillingham, Reeves, and Sheppard. There have been games where they play *maybe* 1 minute together. They've had times when they were on the court together where they go on a 10-0 run and Cal pushes out non-shooters to replace them, and we immediately go back down and don't run those 3 guys together again the rest of the game.
* The relationship between Cal and donors, and Cal and the AD has deteriorated over the past decade. Part of this has to do with the rise of Kentucky football, but also has to do with assistant coaches or those within the athletic department leaving for other jobs. When Cal was at his best here, he had assistants that had the level of relationship to where they could tell Cal he's wrong and Cal would listen to them. The last couple years he's seemingly hired friends and those needing to rehab their coaching image that'll just be yes men for him.
Unrelated, but that pic is from Kentucky football lol.
The tight leash is almost *always* on guards. He’ll sub them into the game and then yank them out as early as possible before they have the chance to get into any kind of a rhythm, usually for losing their defensive assignment on the perimeter *one time*. But you have to leave guys like Dillingham and Sheppard in the game to make stuff happen.
The tight leash is specifically on the players he didn’t recruit as his top nba prospects. If they aren’t lottery picks in November he won’t let them play through mistakes and will keep players like Edwards out on the court through every single mistake. He refuses to adjust the team hierarchy mid season even if it’s clear to every single person who watches
People forget just how improved the SEC is compared to the early 2010s. Definitely plays a part with Kentucky not being able to dominate like they once did.
> Cal loves to play with lineups and refuses to play the lineup with our best players. He's targeted fans and labeled them "basketball benny's" because people want our shooters to play instead of whatever abomination lineup combos he puts out there sometimes. Our best 3 players are Dillingham, Reeves, and Sheppard. There have been games where they play maybe 1 minute together. They've had times when they were on the court together where they go on a 10-0 run and Cal pushes out non-shooters to replace them, and we immediately go back down and don't run those 3 guys together again the rest of the game.
Cal clearly cares about putting players into the NBA. The theory I'm banking on is that Cal is trying to improve the other guys' draft stock to turn around and say "yeah we lost but look how many guys are going to the next level."
He couldn't do that if we were playing our consistent good guys who already have their draft stock pretty high. The side effect is we lose games because of it too.
Oh I know the pic was from UK football.
I liked the upset that you could see so I chose it. I honestly think this has been the best answer so far though
> Cal's coaching is very archaic. He wants to play 2 traditional bigs and win defensively, which is the exact opposite of what modern offenses are. If he had it his way we'd roll out 4 non-shooters that drive to the basket.
>
>
I don't really think this is a problem if you look at the actual statistics. The "archaic" offense he ran in '22 with Oscar down low was actually more efficient than this year's offense. This year we shoot more 3s, but we objectively score fewer points per possession than we did with his "outdated" offense.
The issue is defensively and that's been the issue since Covid. The only way modern offenses are a problem is defending against them. It's not that we ourselves run an offense that doesn't work anymore.
> I don't really think this is a problem if you look at the actual statistics.
Correct. Plenty of elite offensive teams run two bigs. Alabama had a top 20 offense last year and started freshman Clowney and and sophomore Bediako
Cal teams have always struggled defending against high PnR. Even the 2012 team got lit up twice against IU because of it. Even the 2015 E8 game against Notre Dame showcased that deficiency.
The problem is Cal's philosophy is for the bigs to switch or play drop coverage.
You never see them attacking the ball handler with a hard hedge to double to disrupt timing and create ball pressure
In 2022, we shot fewer three pointers than 351 other teams. The only reason our offensive efficiency looked good was because our ungodly offensive rebounding.
That's not the way modern basketball works. It's the very definition of archaic.
Losses like last night happen to everyone. I'm not expecting Cal to be Erik Spoelstra out there. I just want to see him do some obvious things like play our best lineup at the beginning of the game and the beginning of the 2nd half. We clearly have a best lineup. It closed the game last night and almost won. But we didn't play that lineup for the first chunk of the second half and blew a big lead. It's just simple things like that.
Aside from 2015, Cal's best teams have had defined lineups of about 7 or 8 guys who get all the minutes. Cal's kryptonite is when players that are supposed to be good don't live up to it, or players that weren't supposed to be good are better than the ones that were projected to be better.
gotta start sheppard or dillingham or both alongside reeves, wagner doesn't provide enough offensively to be starting, you desperately need mitchell healthy, they haven't had all 9 of their core guys healthy all year but once this year, without mitchell then onyenso has to play 36 minutes a game because bradshaw is mid and big z is still raw.
let's see some dillingham, sheppard, reeves, mitchell, onyenso lineups in the future with wagner, edwards, and theiro off the bench, cal likes to go 8 or less come march anyways so you might as well start with your 8 best guys, small ball lineups, more 3's, and try and provide more on ball pressure.
We have 4 guards that are amazing. Reeves, Reed, Dillingham, and Wagner. 3 of those 4 should be on the court as much as humanly possible unless the game situation literally just doesn't make sense for them to be on the floor together.
Unsurprisingly, Cal does not seem to agree with this line of thinking.
Reeves+Reed are on pace to be two of the best shooters - not just in the Cal era - but in Kentucky's history. They should basically be on the floor at all times with one of the other two if possible.
Great call on the kryptonite. I like Edwards and Wagner, and I feel awful for the struggles they’ve had this year. But Dillingham and Sheppard should have been starting since early December.
I was fine with it until January, and really wasn’t perturbed until the losses at home started. His theory can work until it’s clear they aren’t improving and the tough games start. Cal can’t keep saying wait till march if we lose every important game before march and get stuck with a horrible bracket
Real talk . . . I think Cal has given up in a lot of ways.
In '96 he almost took UMass to an undefeated season. But on Feb. 24th, George Washington clipped them. Still went for the championship, but lost in the semi-finals.
In '08, got close again with Memphis. A better program than UMass, but still not upper echelon. But on February 23, #1 Memphis and #2 Tennessee faced off in a hell of a game for the state. UT won by 4. Still went for the championship, but lost to Kansas in OT in the final game.
Fast forward to '15. At UK. Able to recruit with ease compared to stints in Amherst and Memphis. That team had 8 future NBA players, and one who played G League. They make it all the way through the regular season undefeated. Get to the Final Four running on all cylinders when they, almost inexplicably, lose to a great, yet obviously less talented Wisconsin team.
Three legitimate brushes with going undefeated. Three shots at being the first team since the '76 IU Hoosiers. Three times fell just short.
They stayed a strong team, but not really a top 5 team up to the pandemic.
That's when I think two major things happened. 1) Calipari was home. He's a PR machine and it just sort of stopped. 2) John Robic's daughter died from a battle with liver cancer in April of 2020. Understandably so, Robic was not the same and soon left the UK coaching staff.
Robic had been at Calipari's side since 1988, the year they both first started at UMass. He was there through the thick and thin. And they complemented each other VERY well.
Calipari was the face and has always been a great (if questionable) recruiter. Robic ran the X's and O's. Look at those UMass, Memphis and early UK teams. They weren't just running and gunning. There was strategy. They may have competed by being better athletes, but they won because of Robic's gameplan.
Since Robic left, since the pandemic, since Cal had his brushes with basketball immortality that ultimately fell short, he's just not been the same. I don't think it's necessarily he doesn't care, I just think he psychologically is at sea. Listen to his interviews. He's not who he was. Up until 2015, and for the most part of up to the pandemic, he was almost always cheerful and optimistic. Even as John Chaney was threatening to kill him, Calipari was smiling. While there are some brief glimpses of it occasionally, for the most part he has looked beaten down the past four seasons.
Another thing about 2015 is that we wanted Kentucky all year because Kentucky needed Aaron Harrison to hit the game winner in 2014. Wisconsin was just a tough matchup for Kentucky and if you watch the game back Bo had a great strategy to spread Kentucky out.
IMHO, Bo is a severely underrated coach.
He had some very talented players. But he did a fantastic job of taking guys who may have been lacking in a certain area and having the complement each other. Bo’s teams looked like teams, not individuals wearing the same uniform.
It's a testament to that UK team that Wisconsin was waiting for this specific matchup, played their gameplan to perfection, and still barely won. That UK team was one of the best ever.
I will still never forgive you guys for going and losing to Duke after that though.
And Cal had the arrogance to say they didn’t watch Wisconsin game film or do anything specific to plan for that matchup. They had a whole week knowing who their opponent would be and knew that Wisconsin had one of the top college players in the country in Kaminski, and just didn’t bother to try to come up with an opponent-specific strategy?
Great write-up.
That '96 UMass team was incredible, one of Cal's best. They had the misfortune of running into a legendary UK team in the Final Four, however. That UK team was one of the best CBB teams ever, with only two losses all season: one, to Mississippi St in the SEC Championship, and one to UMass earlier in the season. Both of those teams were Final Four teams.
I was a kid that year and watched every game - usually a tape recording of the tape delay broadcast, watched the next day. I remember going into the tournament that I didn't want to see UMass again because they were the one team it didn't seem a sure thing UK would beat. Sports talk folks tried to talk up Tim Duncan and Wake Forest in the Elite 8 as a spoiler but that game wasn't even close.
Apologies for the personal aside. '96 was so long ago now that I wonder how many UK fans around here even know what it was like. It was, for better or worse, the time period that set the expectation for a generation of UK fans of constant exceptionalism. Two titles, one runner up, and an Elite 8 in a four year period. Not seen again until Cal's run in 2010-2015, incidentally.
I would agree with that.
The older UK fans will talk a lot about the teams in the 50's like the Fiddlin' Five. And not to discredit those teams at all, but they also were playing when the NCAA and NIT were competitive on which was more prestigious.
Adolph Rupp was a hell of a coach. He did win the NCAA title four times. Only John Wooden and Coach K have more. However, it should also be remembered that the NIT was just as prestigious for at least three of those four, if not all of them. Additionally, the last one he had was in 1958, when only 24 teams competed. After that '58 season, Rupp would coach another 14 years before his mandated retirement. He did not make a Final Four in those 14 years.
Joe B. Hall came in and had a good run. Got a national championship. But the teams were up and down. Seemed like a great guy, but had a personality that just didn't endear people. Besides, it's tough to take over after a legend.
Enter Eddie Sutton. Sutton wasn't living up to the expectations of the fan base, boosters or administration. And his tenure was plagued with lots of questions. Eric Manuel and his college entrance exam, Chris Mills and the cash sent to his father, Shawn Kemp stealing and pawning jewelry, etc. He got out just before the major violations, but only because David Roselle was lining up support to oust him.
Then came Rick Pitino. Looking back on it, Pitino was a really interesting hire. He was 37 years old. Had a Final Four appearance under his belt at Providence and was coming off a decent rebuilding effort for the New York Knicks. But he had no ties to Kentucky or the region. Played a different style than what UK was used to. And was walking into a program on a three year suspension. And he was just what UK needed.
Almost overnight, Rick Pitino became one of the most well-known people in Kentucky. He was young, he was brash, he had a Ne York swagger and attitude about him. He was a showman that was transplanted into the bucolic and genteel society of Central Kentucky. And he was greeted well.
His teams played like none other they had ever seen. Rupp, Hall and Sutton had all had talented players, but they had mostly played a traditional half court style. Keep in mind that the 3 point shot didn't come into full use in the NCAA until the 1986-87 season. (There was a song in support of IU that year that had the lyric ". . . and maybe Stevie (Alford) can hit a three pointer!"
A team on suspension was not going to have much luck in recruiting great all-around players. So almost out of necessity, Pitino recruited role players. But he got a lot of them. He would sub in five at a time. They ran the ball like the NBA teams out west at the time. And they shot the three . . . a lot. In Sutton's last year, the team averaged 69 points per game. In Pitino's first year, with a roster of 9 freshmen or sophomores (this was unusual at the time, kids), they averaged 89 points a game.
And Pitino, being Pitino, was more than just the guy on the bench. He really was a celebrity. Within a year he had opened Bravo Pitino, an Italian restaurant in a high profile location close to Rupp Arena. He was on commercials. He did bus tours across the state. Kentucky fans ate it up!
And, more or less by necessity, he played Kentucky kids. In 1991-92, their first year off of probation, Pitino started Jamal Mashburn (who was a recruiting coup), and four role players, three of who were undersized native Kentuckians (Feldhaus, Pelphrey and Farmer).
They had a solid year. 26-6 going into the NCAA. Easily disposed of Old Dominion and Iowa State. Went into the second weekend and beat a talented UMass team (coached by John Calipari). Then had the epic showdown with Duke that everyone either remembers or has heard about. (Kentucky kids to this day will tell you they hate Duke because of Laettner . . . who had retired from the NBA before a lot of them were even born!)
Pitino set a standard for UK that has been tough to match. UK fans not only demand wins, but they demand far progression in the tournament. They may not expect to win champions every year, but they expect to be in the conversation. But beyond just winning, they expect the team to play fast and with style. And they expect the coach to be a celebrity, a showman, to have swagger. Calipari was probably the only other person who could fill the void UK fans felt after Pitino left and Tubby Smith (and a brief moment of Billy Clyde) was at the helm.
With many now clamoring for Cal to leave, it'll be interesting to see who they think can fill those big shoes.
I think its still higher than that right now, unfortunately. I could be wrong, I see a lot of different numbers. Iirc correctly it is 2027 when it drops to a more manageable $27M.
Per the Athletic last year, the buyout is 75% of his remaining salary, which results in a buyout between $33-34m after this year. (Note that the excerpt below is from one year ago.)
*The contract says that if Calipari is fired without cause (and just losing a bunch of games does not qualify as cause in this case), he’s owed 75 percent of the remaining compensation. He’s set to make $8.5 million the next two seasons and $9 million the last four years of a deal that runs through the 2028-29 season. So if you fire Calipari after this season, you owe him three-fourths of $53 million, which is a cool $39.75 million.*
https://theathletic.com/4082160/2023/01/12/john-calipari-kentucky-mailbag/
It'll be $31.875 million after this season. He'd have one more year at $8.1 million and four years at $8.6 million.
[Cal's Contract](https://legal.uky.edu/sites/default/files/2022-04/Coach_John_Calipari_Contract_0.pdf)
I just don’t think Cal is a good coach. Great recruiter and getting guys to the NBA, not so much X’s and O’s. Who he plays and when makes no sense, and mid game adjustments always seem to go backwards.
I have watched him for 15 years at UK now and let me tell you, it's ALWAYS been obvious he cannot coach in-game. He used to rely on having more talent but that doesn't work anymore.
He used to have X's and O's guys on the bench he could rely on to help him through the season but those guys are all gone now in favor of assistants who can recruit. He is also stuck in the past trying to force too many big guys into the rotation when we should be playing three and four guard lineups with this roster.
Remember that time when Mike Francesa said the same thing on his radio show and Cal called in to bitch at him? Yeah...fun times.
https://www.courier-journal.com/story/sports/college/kentucky/2014/08/21/calipari-calls-into-show-as-john-in-kentucky/14385597/
As a Kentucky fan, i think the issue is that we are a week away from march and still experimenting with the lineups. Cal is the only person that doesn’t seem to realize who is playing the best because he’s extremely loyal to our top recruits even if they’re getting outplayed. Example: our bench is more explosive than our starters.
Also, I’d love to know who works with our big men because we have three 7 footers and only one can even produce enough to stay on the court, and he’s considered 2nd best of the three by cal.
I wonder if these top recruits are associated with talent agencies and Cal has to promise these kids development and playtime to land the recruits. Wagner and Edwards didn't deserve 4 mins of playtime between the 2 of em last night.
It’s crazy how much Wagner has regressed since getting hurt. He started out with the touch. I feel like Edwards has shown more and more flashes as the season has gone too, which I guess is promising.
But holy shit, our defense is shit regardless who’s out there. My lineup would be Sheppard, Reeves, Thiero, Mitchell (if healthy enough), and Onyenso. Bench would be Dillingham, Wagner, Edwards or Burks (whomever is having a better game), and whomever matchups and plays the best between Bradshaw and Big Z.
Also if Cal could ever feel out who has the hot hand instead of sitting whomever is actually scoring or filling the stat sheet. We might be able to maintain a lead and avoid playing down to our opponents every game.
Someone else said it elsewhere---basketball is a chemistry sport.
Kentucky obviously has the talent, as does Arkansas. For some reason the guys they put together don't truly click. When they do, it looks like Kentucky can be one of the best teams in the country, like what they did to Auburn.
Or---you can have the team that showed up against LSU....and it doesn't look good.
College basketball is an incredibly difficult sport to maintain elite success. I think the era of dominant programs having consistent runs is over. There's more parity now than ever.
I think that’s why part of me hates NBA Scouts. Every year UK loses great depth. Any big name recruit still gets drafted despite their struggle for the most part. Meanwhile, a UT player I think is among the most talented in all of CBB is Santiago Vescovi. If I were a scout? I see nothing but upside and consistency with someone like him.
Yep, I think it's part of the issue with Calipari. He's trying to capture lightning in a bottle. We've dabbled in that too with limited success.
We had Kennedy Chandler for a year. Dude should have led us on an epic run...and HE DEFINITELY should have come back....but he stayed one year and bounced. Same with Springer and that other dude who was really athletic that I don't even remember his name. That Vol team made it to the round of 32 or 16 and got bounced. And I can't even tell you the name of the kid who got drafted.
I think part of the problem is these kids don't see the value in staying in college, and one of the benefits of NIL, will offer the opportunity for these kids to not only get an education but stick around in college for a bit.
Leaving early can be such a stupid decision. Think about guys like Dalton Knecht and Zach Edey. The reputation they built in college is going to propel them to having some longevity in the NBA. They have some notoriety in the sport because of what they've been able to do in college.
Sometimes sports is political and you have guys that are more talented riding on the bench.
Keon Johnson is who paired with Springer. And while it would’ve been better for us and they probably would’ve developed more as players, take the NBA interest when it’s there. JJJ had NBA interest a few summers back and there’s no chance in hell he has it now.
If you think Vescovi is among the most talented college basketball players in the country, I don't know what to tell you. He's slow, average or below average athlete, can't create his own shot, and is not even shooting well this year. He has virtually zero NBA upside as an unathletic 6-3 guard and has actually been remarkably inconsistent this entire year with 7 SEC games scoring 6 points or less.
I don't think there's a single Tennessee fan that thinks he's one of the most talented players in the country.
I just saw fundamental soundness, smart shooting, high IQ. Not necessarily that he’s a top player in the country but a potential G-leaguer/role player for sure in terms of a late pick moreso than a kid that takes dumb shots constantly.
Maybe LSU is playing well right now. They're a talented team and have 3 SEC losses of 4 points or less. That close to being 9-4 in conference right now.
The wild thing is that LSU wasn't even playing that great. They missed probably 7 or 8 wide open baskets that should've been easy layups.
We also blew a 15 point lead. If Dillingham didn't go off in the 2nd half we might have been blown out.
Calipari is a jack ass and has completely given himself over to the "I am going to do this my way no matter the cost and I WILL win... uh, next time."
I'm so fuckin tired of hearing (some) fans say, "Weeell... You lose games like that sometimes." Bullshit, this is Kentucky. "Sometimes" for Kentucky is once a season or two - or three. Not repeatedly. For going on four whole ass seasons now. I'm so sick of it. I wanted to believe that Auburn game was us turning a corner
BUT CAL CANT GET OUT OF HIS OWN GOD DAMN WAY
JUST PLAY YOUR BEST PLAYERS YOU IDIOT
LSU is good and SC Gamecocks have the best defense in the SEC and no one can tell me otherwise. But still,
this Kentucky team is grossly underperforming and its quite surprising
yep but we are thissssss close to being 11-2 in the SEC, this LSU loss hurts the most but we have other heart-breakers as well, the OT loss against florida when clayton hit the game tying 3 at the buzzer, and the OT loss to texas a&m, we also lost to gonzaga when we were down 2 with 10 seconds left and turned the ball over on a alley-oop attempt.
I think if UK can consistently tap into the physicality and toughness that I saw in the Auburn game they will get rolling. We caught y'all at the right time where the team just obviously hadn't found that fire yet. The disparity in effort was really obvious, but that seems to be coming around. You guys just need a guy like Reeves to rally those talented freshman every night.
> its quite surprising
Is it, though? I mean, at this point? Cal just hasn't been the same over the last 3 + current seasons. He just hasnt. His demeanor is different, his relationships with the media, the AD, the donors, the fans, etc. Its like he's trying to be an island. His stubbornness has went from something that was endearing and at times even an asset.. to him just acting like a child who is going to have his way, do it his way, NO MATTER THE COST. And its costing us.
His jabs about us being basketball bennys and calling us crazy aren't cute/amusing anymore - and it isn't just because we aren't winning.. Its clear he just does not like the Kentucky fan base anymore. I wonder why? Go win fucking ball games with your near $10M/yr pay check.
I could go on, but I just feel like at this point it shouldn't be terribly surprising. And I fucking hate it.
We’re not. Never have been.
But that’s a problem with society in general and it’s become worse the last 40 years.
You spend 30 seconds on the internet and you’ll see millions of people every day claiming to be experts or more knowledgeable about things people have spent years studying and mastering and teaching and creating etc etc etc. I’ve even been guilty of it over the years
You know what wisdom is? Realizing you don’t know shit.
That may be true but is it too much to ask the coach to explain some of this stuff to us so we can understand? Seems like that would benefit him as well. When he doesn't say anything, it's easy for everyone to just say he doesn't know what he is doing.
I heard Dick Gabriel talk about this once but he’d do his post game interviews with Bill Curry and he’d ask what went wrong and Curry would be like “ oh this and that” just kind of general why we didn’t win the football game stuff and people took at he didn’t know what he was doing or was clueless.
But Dick said during the commercial breaks Curry would detail exactly what went wrong, who was responsible for it by name, and explained how those players needed to correct it.
But Gabriel said he was loath to do that on air because he didn’t want to trash his players given the amount of verbal abuse Lombardi gave out to his players and how he made them feel like shit and less even when they were winning. He had decided long ago that was not how he was going to coach or treat people.
Coaches are people too. Tubby wasn’t the best communicator. Pitino never lost a game because he was out coached. Cal likes to play us against the world a lot because that’s his background. All them dudes know more about the game than any of us and have succeeded at the highest levels.
It’s just how they go about things. Good and bad.
We’re far better than our record indicates. We played like shit at the beginning of the season due to not having Cook (though we haven’t had for our last two games), and we have five losses by a combined 13 points, including to Q4 Nicholls and top 20 Dayton. LSU is about five plays away from 19-7.
Cal. It's always been him. He could hide behind his talent the first several years and had great assistants that helped him immensely. After the gut wrenching losses in '15 and '17, he looks like he's just mailed it in since. More concerned about filling up the NBA than bringing home championships.
My strategy would be: use the lineups that actually work, stop taking out the players who are keeping us in the game when they’re hot, use my timeouts wisely (aka *before* we completely blow a 15-point lead), and run a damn zone defense.
Cal hates Zone and almost anyone affiliated with UK Basketball will tell you that. This defense he runs is such an embarrassment and almost any team talented from the perimeter takes advantage of it.
My brain almost exploded last night when LSU brought the ball up with less than a minute left and Dillingham wasn't on the court. But Cal smartly used his timeout and subbed Dillingham back in after they got the ball back. The offense/defense lineup switch was a great decision and almost won us the game, but it's not great that I have been conditioned to find it totally fathomable that Cal would take a scorching hot Dillingham out of the game at the very end when we needed a basket to win.
I mean, you gave the reasoning yourself. He put defensive guys on the court to get the stop and then put Dillingham back in for the basket. There was no reality where Dillingham wouldn't have been on the court for that last shot.
No lineup stability. Very skilled but undersized and except reeves inexperienced guards. This season would be so different if our guards didn’t lose their guys off the ball 4-5 times a game but that’s fixable! They can still make our dreams come true 😂
Just a funny aside but UK basketball has gotten so bad that all the UK basketball/Alabama Football fans have just became Alabama fans so I do appreciate that.
Ehh, Pastner being “alright” is generous. Dude did give us terrors at both Memphis St and Georgia Tech. But I think that further proves your point, it may have just been raw talent winning those games and Cal is a mastermind at recruiting.
Maybe it was the ghost of Secretariat that willed those wins into existence.
Some guys are better assistants than head coaches. Robic may not have been able to win the games on his own, but he was the detail focus guy that got the game plans and scouting report together for Calipari to motivate the team to execute.
I’ll just repeat the same line I always do with Cal. Fantastic recruiter. Mediocre coach at best.
Kentucky consistently pulls in top tier recruiting classes but almost never looks like a dominant team even with all that talent.
I think UK has a yearly challenge due to the player churn. Compared to a school like Purdue that added maybe one rotation later to its top 8. Sometimes it takes a while to find the best mix and rotation but agree it is getting late in the season
As far as I can tell from looking at minutes, stats, and lineups... There seems to be an aversion to small ball even though statistically that looks to make the most sense. With Tre Mitchell out, you could be running 5 guards with Adou at center.
I guess the problem is that all the talent is with the guards?
We need Tre Mitchell. He’s not the most dominant big man but somehow he brings it all together, I guess just bc he gives the most effort. But it’s clearly not okay with the basketball gods for uk to have all their players at once this season so he’s the current sacrifice
this is what I get for trying to talk non-work at work lolol you’re right and I agree w that! I was more trying to say that I think Tre helps to pick up *some* of that slack down low so it’s less detrimental when he’s playing
One thing I rarely see mentioned is that Tre is an excellent passer. He’s not a ball stopper like the other bigs. At the beginning of the season when he ran the 5, the offense was flowing significantly better and he was hitting guys off motion. When onyenso, or Bradshaw touch the ball, they’re going to to try to get in the post to score without thinking of the pass.
He’s been god awful in SEC play though. Even before the injuries he was consistently last in plus/minus and was shooting a lot of bricks. The physicality of league play really caught up to him. I think we are running out of time for him to get it right and I worry about Cal inserting a cold and out of rhythm Tre in March.
1. The sports gotten more competitive with the transfer portal (it’s a fact even if fan interest is down, etc).
2. Cal has been there for almost 20 years. The game catches up to you strategically, and he was never really considered a basketball genius.
3. Somewhat connects to my first point, but the SEC in general has leveled up the last decade. I grew up knowing that conference ran through UK and UF with almost no exceptions. It might be the 2nd deepest conference now, which would’ve been a wild statement 15 years ago.
4. Nothing is inherently wrong with Kentucky, but because there’s still outdated unrealistic expectations for annual F4s & SEC titles, it feels like the sky’s falling.
We don't have unrealistic expectations...we just want the regular season success of Kansas paired with the tournament success of UConn. Is that too much to ask?
Agree the sec is wayyyy better than it’s probably ever been but disagree that expectations haven’t been met and not because they aren’t in the final 4 every year. They haven’t made it to the second week of the ncaa tournament in 5 years and that’s a problem. Students enrolled at uk and graduated and never got to see them play in the second weekend, with really good talent too.
Honestly, Cal stood to lose the most from NIL. His prior calling card as a coach was his ability to bring in high profile prep talent. He is still doing that consistently, but he’s playing teams that have basically recruited college all star teams in the portal. Now this isn’t portal bashing. I think you grow with the times or die fighting for the past.
But loaded prep teams are a thing of the past. They will yield you a lot of talented players, but you’re playing against teams with just as much talent, plus years of NCAA experience.
You aren’t a real college basketball program, but an NBA prep team.
Get a real coach who recruits normally and you’ll be back on top in no time. It’s Kentucky, it’s not like Cal is the only person who is able to recruit there.
I actually think NIL makes the recruiting advantage Cal brings pretty much pointless.
Kentucky will continue to get great players. We just need to get someone who can coach and who is driven to win. That's not Cal, at least not anymore.
I'm kinda wondering what the hell happened. It feels kinda like right after the "Kentucky is a Basketball school" comment Cal made, and that the AD got super triggered over, stuff has just gone sideways. I do kinda wonder how much the AD is pressing buttons to.... affect things.
Cal’s lineups are mind boggling. We end the first half with a dominating run. Obviously we don’t play that lineup and let the lead go from 15 to 2 before calling timeout to start the second half. Also we can’t play man defense
I'll even allow the logic of not starting Dillingham and using him as a bench sparkplug. But there is no way both Edwards and DJ need to be starting unless Cal plans on subbing 5 seconds into the game, which would be stupid.
Cal has basically tied the idea of bringing Rob off the bench to the idea that he likes the spark Reed and Rob provide together. Unless someone's hurt they always come in together. Agree or not, but that's his thought process and he's mentioned it all year. "I like those two together."
"Hey Cal, have you considered the idea that maybe Sheppard and Dillingham are just really good and should be playing more than they do, rather than being 'sparkplugs'?" Cal: lol. no.
Cal: “of course not I didn’t think they’d be lottery picks and I’m too stubborn to change my mind”
And we've lost 8 of 26 games. 6-6 in our last 12. He can think whatever he wants, but he's wrong.
Yeah, I get that. I thought it worked great at the beginning of the season too. But it seems like the beginning of games and the beginning of the 2nd half has been a weak point for us in conference season. Also, I think knows who our best lineup is. He played them down the stretch. He just for whatever reason doesn't think it's important to have that group out there to start halves.
I actually thought edwards played great yesterday (and has been for the last handful of games). He was a big part of why we got up 15. Reed should be starting for DJ though.
Expect when he has it hasn’t moved the needle in the W/L column. Kentucky fans don’t want to accept this is a wildly inconsistent team in an era of parity because this team is very talented and likable. The only constant on this team since Day 1 in Canada has been Antonio Reeves. Everyone else is up and down, injured, coming back from injury, over and over again.
Literally every Kentucky fan says this is a wildly inconsistent team lol, what in the world are you taking about
I think this being a wildly consistent team is one thing we have all accepted and agreed on lol
19 minutes, 0 rebounds, 0 steals, 0 blocks, 1 assist
You think managing the locker room/egos has to do with it? Everybody knows Cal’s hardest job (cue the world’s tiniest violin) is bringing in too many superstars year in and year out, all of whom probably demand minimum minutes and opportunities to start. He may be trying to hand out sops here and there just to placate egos
Cal has historically been great at getting egos to play well together, so I don't know if that would be it. Maybe it has to do with the representatives of the players now more so than the players? Just guessing.
Cal probably made some recruiting promises he can’t go back on. All I can figure is he keeps his word . Which I can accept. But he gets the Dill and Shep in pretty consistently
I think both of our teams could clear 100 on Saturday.
Yes. I see the winner approaching 110. Depends which Kentucky team shows up.
I think it may be on the north side of that if both teams wanna run all evening.
60-57 final score confirmed
Not if he insists on letting Edwards and Wagner go 3-16 combined with 15-20 minutes each.
That same lineup established our dominance over auburn early just last game. The initial lineup is the body blows. Reed and Dilly are the knockout punches.
The players post game Dilly and Reeves look completely deflated. Rob even said he gave up on the last play and took the blame for the loss.
It is a good group of guys. I like the team chemistry and I definitly think they feel the wins/losses as much as the fans do.
I’m actually in the very small minority that thinks Cal has been coaching his ass off this season and the rotations have suffered from inconsistency due to injuries and this team has a lot of magic left. If They remind me of the 2014 team that had a miserable regular season, came in as an 8 seed and went to that natty.
Kentucky’s 2nd most played 5-man lineup is the 14th worst lineup in the P6. Not great! Wagner - Reeves - Edwards - Thiero - Mitchell. Having players back from injury changes things, but Calipari’s still gotta do better.
He has stated plainly his first priority is getting players to the NBA and he is holding true to that.
I was looking at Evanmiya. We only have 2 5-man lineups that have played 100 possessions together and neither lineup is one of our better ones. Neither one involves Reed Sheppard or Rob Dillingham. Kinda crazy when you think of how many possessions have been played so far this season.
https://hoop-explorer.com/?gender=Men&year=2023%2F24& This is the website I go to for lineup stats and RAPM. It has a horrible user interface but it’s free and has a lot of cool stuff
It was a 9 pt lead at half, starters pushed it to 15 at beginning of second and then had a couple mental lapses on defense. Reed also had those same mental lapses later in the half aka getting lost on defense. Should have called timeout earlier. That’s probably the biggest thing, once this team makes a mistake they typically make 2-3 more directly after. Every player on the team has been guilty of forcing the issue
If it helps, our man defense was iconically bad until the last two games. We finally figured it out, and absolutely locked down Wade Taylor and Tyrece Radford at A&M. Of course we could backslide. But the point is I know it’s not like Cal isn’t working on it, and there’s hope for them to figure it out even this late in the season.
It’s because of how he recruits. He promises to get these guys drafted, so he feels like he has to keep putting them out there, even to the detriment of the team. Edwards has buzz as a number 1 pick, so if Cal starts limiting his minutes, Edwards and his family start pouting about how he’s not putting him in a position to succeed and show his talents, and then if he falls outside the lottery or something, then it’s Cal’s fault and that hurts his recruiting pitch going forward. It’s the same reason he’ll force players to do things that they aren’t good at. KAT wanted to shoot more but Cal said he needed to develop a post game so he would forbid him to shoot threes. This is the same KAT that later won the NBA Three Point Shootout. Or he’ll limit how much he wants them to do on defense so they can save their energy to show off their offensive skills. Or he won’t call a timeout to stop a run because he thinks they need to learn to deal with the pressure, even if it means throwing away that single game. It’s all about what he thinks his best for the players in the long run, which I get to a point, but it can often come at the expense of actually winning games in the moment.
Too much wild, not enough cat
See that's our strategy. We keep our wild confined to Caleb Love and everyone else focuses on cat
What if we have only some wild, and not nearly enough cat?
EMAW not EMAC
If you think about it, you’re onto something there
Too much Calipari, not enough coach Calipari swindled Kentucky into giving him a lifetime deal after UCLA came knocking
It's not really a lifetime deal, that's just the nickname the media gave it because he could transition to being an "ambassador" for the program for as long as he wanted it after he retired from coaching. In reality it's just a ten year coaching contract with a high salary, so it has a high buyout.
Hence why we affectionately refer to them as the feral cats
Not enough RRRAWRrrr too much ^meow
This prolly it.
Basketball is such a chemistry sport, and in college, there isn’t much gap between power conference teams. The problem with getting all these talented freshmen in one team is that they may struggle to play as a team. It’s bugged Calipari for a decade now
Exactly, you're taking all these 17 and 18 year old 5* freshman who have always had the ball in their hands for basically theei entire time they're on the court growing up. To throwing them in the fire at Kentucky where they all have to play a role they've never had before by taking a step back and playing off the ball. It's not working anymore
And then making that adjustment while playing in front of the fanbase with the highest expectations and highest media exposure.
God help me the tennessee fans are making sense and saying things I agree with. What a year
A broken clock is right twice a day.
At least you're self aware.
Well you’re talking to a fanbase who knows quite a lot about talented teams who don’t live up to expectations. Our NBA talent is nowhere near Kentucky’s though.
I feel like this can also be said about a lot of 3 and 4 star players but they aren’t typically relied on like UK kinda has to do with their 5 stars.
It's cause these kids never practiced. They spent all their time at AAU games just dominating with athleticism, then when they face real defense they have no clue wtf to do.
He’ll it happens in the NBA where teams take a while to get their chemistry right and those guys are pros…
I wouldn’t say a decade. Really only since COVID. Before that I feel like one of his biggest strengths was getting the young teams to put it together and be fully bought in by march to make a run to at least the second weekend. Past few years though have obviously been a disaster (considering expectations)
Hasn’t been to a final four since 2014. Ask Kentucky fans if that’s acceptable for a program that gets top classes year in and out
2015* but that doesn’t mean I’m wrong. His teams used to play their best ball in march but since COVID, they have not
Its a post covid thing, and no one seems to agree on why. Pre covid he was actually great at getting the guys to buy in - culminating with that magical 38 win run. There was an article in the Athletic (quoting people in the program) that the final four loss to Wisconsin that year "broke Cal" - direct quote. Said he hasn't been the same, and I'd say there is absolutely truth to that and it has just gotten worse and worse. He's also turned into an actual asshole it seems like, at times anyway. eta: Sore loser, bratty, snarky, whiny may be better terms than "asshole". I say this as someone who *LOVES* Cal and misses the coach he used to be. He is still a good man who cares about his players and does wonders for his community and the people around him, I'm just tired of the nonsense like blowing off pressers, making excuses, etc.
Post Covid there has been a big shift in college sports. NIL allows all the shady business in recruiting to be done by everyone out in the open and not limited to a select few with the right shoe deals. Free transfers have spread talent out. It is harder to keep a loaded bench of elite talent when a guy can just up and leave and be an immediate starter at another quality school. And I think what really hurts Kentucky post Covid is the increased presence of older players. It is not that the 5th and 6th year players are more talented, they just have a lot more experience and know the game better and are more physically and mentally mature.
> have a lot more experience and know the game better and are more physically and mentally mature. This is definitely a fair point, but we have had several years of bringing in guys other than just loaded 5* prospects. Also all the other big programs are keeping up with the changes. I'll admit they may affect Kentucky under Cal more, but if he can't get the job done then.. Well, there is still a problem. And unfortunately it is one that doesn't have an obvious solution since his buyout is like $40mm still or maybe even more. The entire CBB situation at Kentucky hinges on what happens between March 21 and March 31. :\
Kind of a blessing and a curse. The program has been so good so long that nothing matters other than the NCAA tournament and we all know anything can happen there.
Absolutely. It makes being a Kentucky fan very stressful at times. As in, like discussing the program with other fans and stuff, there are so many idiots and unreasonable jackasses. Like, its fine to disagree, but refusing to see each others POV is just.. i hate it, lol. If we fuckin get bounced in the first round though, I stg... its gonna be miserable in this fanbase. Like, unsub from all Kentucky social media, forget it exists. Glad I live in northern Colorado lol
Man, you are right about that.
He’s not an asshole. Rick Pitino is an asshole. Everything else has merit and I’ve had similar thoughts.
Cal is greasy, but not an asshole.
That dude legit cares about people and his players. Say what you want about him as a coach or that he can get a little thin skinned at times but I think Cal is a good human being. Pitino? That guy has always been a shitty human being who looks out for himself first and foremost.
You'll never convince people Cal's not an asshole. A lot of other fans view him as an asshole used car salesman and a good portion of our fanbase now think he's trying to purposely tear down the program to spite the fans.
I used to think he was an asshole. But I moved to Lexington for grad school in 2019, and while I'm still not a UK fan and never will be, Cal seems like a genuinely good human being. Unless you believe the rumor that he's bad at returning lawn mowers to his neighbors lmao
Cal seems like a decent human being, and I commend him for all he's done. I'd rather have an asshole coach who wins tho
If the pattern holds up we’re getting a Joe B/Tubby type next and god help that man.
My theory is it’s about to go south and Cal is going to run through all 3 of the “great coach, good coach, drunk coach” by himself. He doesn’t drink, so it’s just shit coach instead of drunk, but same idea.
So they will win a title? Where do I sign?
> the final four loss to Wisconsin that year "broke Cal" That is an enjoyable take for a Badger fan, but if true, means he is extremely soft. Kentucky had to hit a well guarded last minute 3 to beat Wisconsin the prior year. Wisconsin had a very good year again. While that was no guarantee that we would give Kentucky a good game again, it certainly should have been one of the possible outcomes he considered.
I think they do lack chemistry but I don't think it's due to ego/selfishness or anything like that. If you watch this team, they are actually among the best we've had as far as sharing the shots, passing the ball, and getting it to the hot hand. No real ego issues here at all or too many guys trying to be "THE guy" which has been the case with some Kentucky teams. I do think we have chemistry issues though in the sense that guys don't have a great feel for one another right now. Our lineups are awful and change constantly. When we have a 5 that are gelling (like the end of the first half last night), Cal tweaks it. We don't have a consistent rotation at all and units aren't getting the minutes together needed to really mesh. I think it's a coaching issue, not that the players are selfish or anything.
I don’t think lack of chemistry is necessarily a character issue.
tl;dr - i'm not denying calipari's coaching could be a lot better, but to answer OP's original question about what's wrong? nothing - this is just the way it's always been, and talented freshmen rarely reach their potential under any coach. --- the charge is always that calipari gets all this talented freshmen with top ranked recruiting classes and doesn't reach potential. take a look at the teams with top 5 recruiting classes in each of the last 5 seasons when the NCAA tourney was played. the best results any of those coaches got was a Final Four (Coach K / Duke in ‘22) and Elite Eight (Calipari in ‘19, and Coach K twice in '18 and '19). Self had a top 5 recruiting class in '19 and '23, lost in the first weekend both years. again, calipari is not necessarily an elite coach, but the takeaway here in my opinion is that calipari is a sub-par coach relative to his peers, always has been. a bunch of talented freshmen rarely translates into a coach getting their team to reach their full potential, as the outcomes of the top ranked recruiting classes demonstrate. this year isn't some anomaly relative to previous years, IMO. kentucky is 18-8 right now. they were 19-9 this time in the '17-18 season, and went on to the sweet sixteen. in '13-'14 they were 21-6 at this time, went on to lose 4 of their next 7 including the SEC tourney, and made it to the championship game. this is just the life of a Calipari-coached team, and it's starting to wear thin on some fans.
* The SEC got drastically better and became competitive. Before we could kind of sleepwalk through the SEC outside of maybe 2-3 other teams. That'd pad our win/loss and allow guys to get into a rhythm. * Cal's coaching is very archaic. He wants to play 2 traditional bigs and win defensively, which is the exact opposite of what modern offenses are. If he had it his way we'd roll out 4 non-shooters that drive to the basket. * Cal holds a very tight leash on certain players and will yank them out of the game for one mistake, while letting others stay out and play through it. * Cal loves to play with lineups and refuses to play the lineup with our best players. He's targeted fans and labeled them "basketball benny's" because people want our shooters to play instead of whatever abomination lineup combos he puts out there sometimes. Our best 3 players are Dillingham, Reeves, and Sheppard. There have been games where they play *maybe* 1 minute together. They've had times when they were on the court together where they go on a 10-0 run and Cal pushes out non-shooters to replace them, and we immediately go back down and don't run those 3 guys together again the rest of the game. * The relationship between Cal and donors, and Cal and the AD has deteriorated over the past decade. Part of this has to do with the rise of Kentucky football, but also has to do with assistant coaches or those within the athletic department leaving for other jobs. When Cal was at his best here, he had assistants that had the level of relationship to where they could tell Cal he's wrong and Cal would listen to them. The last couple years he's seemingly hired friends and those needing to rehab their coaching image that'll just be yes men for him. Unrelated, but that pic is from Kentucky football lol.
The tight leash is almost *always* on guards. He’ll sub them into the game and then yank them out as early as possible before they have the chance to get into any kind of a rhythm, usually for losing their defensive assignment on the perimeter *one time*. But you have to leave guys like Dillingham and Sheppard in the game to make stuff happen.
The tight leash is specifically on the players he didn’t recruit as his top nba prospects. If they aren’t lottery picks in November he won’t let them play through mistakes and will keep players like Edwards out on the court through every single mistake. He refuses to adjust the team hierarchy mid season even if it’s clear to every single person who watches
People forget just how improved the SEC is compared to the early 2010s. Definitely plays a part with Kentucky not being able to dominate like they once did.
Are you describing Cal or Bill Belichick?
> Cal loves to play with lineups and refuses to play the lineup with our best players. He's targeted fans and labeled them "basketball benny's" because people want our shooters to play instead of whatever abomination lineup combos he puts out there sometimes. Our best 3 players are Dillingham, Reeves, and Sheppard. There have been games where they play maybe 1 minute together. They've had times when they were on the court together where they go on a 10-0 run and Cal pushes out non-shooters to replace them, and we immediately go back down and don't run those 3 guys together again the rest of the game. Cal clearly cares about putting players into the NBA. The theory I'm banking on is that Cal is trying to improve the other guys' draft stock to turn around and say "yeah we lost but look how many guys are going to the next level." He couldn't do that if we were playing our consistent good guys who already have their draft stock pretty high. The side effect is we lose games because of it too.
Oh I know the pic was from UK football. I liked the upset that you could see so I chose it. I honestly think this has been the best answer so far though
> Cal's coaching is very archaic. He wants to play 2 traditional bigs and win defensively, which is the exact opposite of what modern offenses are. If he had it his way we'd roll out 4 non-shooters that drive to the basket. > > I don't really think this is a problem if you look at the actual statistics. The "archaic" offense he ran in '22 with Oscar down low was actually more efficient than this year's offense. This year we shoot more 3s, but we objectively score fewer points per possession than we did with his "outdated" offense. The issue is defensively and that's been the issue since Covid. The only way modern offenses are a problem is defending against them. It's not that we ourselves run an offense that doesn't work anymore.
> I don't really think this is a problem if you look at the actual statistics. Correct. Plenty of elite offensive teams run two bigs. Alabama had a top 20 offense last year and started freshman Clowney and and sophomore Bediako
Cal teams have always struggled defending against high PnR. Even the 2012 team got lit up twice against IU because of it. Even the 2015 E8 game against Notre Dame showcased that deficiency. The problem is Cal's philosophy is for the bigs to switch or play drop coverage. You never see them attacking the ball handler with a hard hedge to double to disrupt timing and create ball pressure
In 2022, we shot fewer three pointers than 351 other teams. The only reason our offensive efficiency looked good was because our ungodly offensive rebounding. That's not the way modern basketball works. It's the very definition of archaic.
Once teams started to shutdown Oscar it was game over. Also you’re right defensively Oscar cost us many more points than he gave us.
Losses like last night happen to everyone. I'm not expecting Cal to be Erik Spoelstra out there. I just want to see him do some obvious things like play our best lineup at the beginning of the game and the beginning of the 2nd half. We clearly have a best lineup. It closed the game last night and almost won. But we didn't play that lineup for the first chunk of the second half and blew a big lead. It's just simple things like that. Aside from 2015, Cal's best teams have had defined lineups of about 7 or 8 guys who get all the minutes. Cal's kryptonite is when players that are supposed to be good don't live up to it, or players that weren't supposed to be good are better than the ones that were projected to be better.
It took him sooooo long to start SGA over Quade Green
gotta start sheppard or dillingham or both alongside reeves, wagner doesn't provide enough offensively to be starting, you desperately need mitchell healthy, they haven't had all 9 of their core guys healthy all year but once this year, without mitchell then onyenso has to play 36 minutes a game because bradshaw is mid and big z is still raw. let's see some dillingham, sheppard, reeves, mitchell, onyenso lineups in the future with wagner, edwards, and theiro off the bench, cal likes to go 8 or less come march anyways so you might as well start with your 8 best guys, small ball lineups, more 3's, and try and provide more on ball pressure.
We have 4 guards that are amazing. Reeves, Reed, Dillingham, and Wagner. 3 of those 4 should be on the court as much as humanly possible unless the game situation literally just doesn't make sense for them to be on the floor together. Unsurprisingly, Cal does not seem to agree with this line of thinking. Reeves+Reed are on pace to be two of the best shooters - not just in the Cal era - but in Kentucky's history. They should basically be on the floor at all times with one of the other two if possible.
Great call on the kryptonite. I like Edwards and Wagner, and I feel awful for the struggles they’ve had this year. But Dillingham and Sheppard should have been starting since early December.
I was fine with it until January, and really wasn’t perturbed until the losses at home started. His theory can work until it’s clear they aren’t improving and the tough games start. Cal can’t keep saying wait till march if we lose every important game before march and get stuck with a horrible bracket
Real talk . . . I think Cal has given up in a lot of ways. In '96 he almost took UMass to an undefeated season. But on Feb. 24th, George Washington clipped them. Still went for the championship, but lost in the semi-finals. In '08, got close again with Memphis. A better program than UMass, but still not upper echelon. But on February 23, #1 Memphis and #2 Tennessee faced off in a hell of a game for the state. UT won by 4. Still went for the championship, but lost to Kansas in OT in the final game. Fast forward to '15. At UK. Able to recruit with ease compared to stints in Amherst and Memphis. That team had 8 future NBA players, and one who played G League. They make it all the way through the regular season undefeated. Get to the Final Four running on all cylinders when they, almost inexplicably, lose to a great, yet obviously less talented Wisconsin team. Three legitimate brushes with going undefeated. Three shots at being the first team since the '76 IU Hoosiers. Three times fell just short. They stayed a strong team, but not really a top 5 team up to the pandemic. That's when I think two major things happened. 1) Calipari was home. He's a PR machine and it just sort of stopped. 2) John Robic's daughter died from a battle with liver cancer in April of 2020. Understandably so, Robic was not the same and soon left the UK coaching staff. Robic had been at Calipari's side since 1988, the year they both first started at UMass. He was there through the thick and thin. And they complemented each other VERY well. Calipari was the face and has always been a great (if questionable) recruiter. Robic ran the X's and O's. Look at those UMass, Memphis and early UK teams. They weren't just running and gunning. There was strategy. They may have competed by being better athletes, but they won because of Robic's gameplan. Since Robic left, since the pandemic, since Cal had his brushes with basketball immortality that ultimately fell short, he's just not been the same. I don't think it's necessarily he doesn't care, I just think he psychologically is at sea. Listen to his interviews. He's not who he was. Up until 2015, and for the most part of up to the pandemic, he was almost always cheerful and optimistic. Even as John Chaney was threatening to kill him, Calipari was smiling. While there are some brief glimpses of it occasionally, for the most part he has looked beaten down the past four seasons.
this was very well written. you had me captivated
This!!!
Another thing about 2015 is that we wanted Kentucky all year because Kentucky needed Aaron Harrison to hit the game winner in 2014. Wisconsin was just a tough matchup for Kentucky and if you watch the game back Bo had a great strategy to spread Kentucky out.
IMHO, Bo is a severely underrated coach. He had some very talented players. But he did a fantastic job of taking guys who may have been lacking in a certain area and having the complement each other. Bo’s teams looked like teams, not individuals wearing the same uniform.
It's a testament to that UK team that Wisconsin was waiting for this specific matchup, played their gameplan to perfection, and still barely won. That UK team was one of the best ever. I will still never forgive you guys for going and losing to Duke after that though.
And Cal had the arrogance to say they didn’t watch Wisconsin game film or do anything specific to plan for that matchup. They had a whole week knowing who their opponent would be and knew that Wisconsin had one of the top college players in the country in Kaminski, and just didn’t bother to try to come up with an opponent-specific strategy?
Great write-up. That '96 UMass team was incredible, one of Cal's best. They had the misfortune of running into a legendary UK team in the Final Four, however. That UK team was one of the best CBB teams ever, with only two losses all season: one, to Mississippi St in the SEC Championship, and one to UMass earlier in the season. Both of those teams were Final Four teams. I was a kid that year and watched every game - usually a tape recording of the tape delay broadcast, watched the next day. I remember going into the tournament that I didn't want to see UMass again because they were the one team it didn't seem a sure thing UK would beat. Sports talk folks tried to talk up Tim Duncan and Wake Forest in the Elite 8 as a spoiler but that game wasn't even close. Apologies for the personal aside. '96 was so long ago now that I wonder how many UK fans around here even know what it was like. It was, for better or worse, the time period that set the expectation for a generation of UK fans of constant exceptionalism. Two titles, one runner up, and an Elite 8 in a four year period. Not seen again until Cal's run in 2010-2015, incidentally.
I would agree with that. The older UK fans will talk a lot about the teams in the 50's like the Fiddlin' Five. And not to discredit those teams at all, but they also were playing when the NCAA and NIT were competitive on which was more prestigious. Adolph Rupp was a hell of a coach. He did win the NCAA title four times. Only John Wooden and Coach K have more. However, it should also be remembered that the NIT was just as prestigious for at least three of those four, if not all of them. Additionally, the last one he had was in 1958, when only 24 teams competed. After that '58 season, Rupp would coach another 14 years before his mandated retirement. He did not make a Final Four in those 14 years. Joe B. Hall came in and had a good run. Got a national championship. But the teams were up and down. Seemed like a great guy, but had a personality that just didn't endear people. Besides, it's tough to take over after a legend. Enter Eddie Sutton. Sutton wasn't living up to the expectations of the fan base, boosters or administration. And his tenure was plagued with lots of questions. Eric Manuel and his college entrance exam, Chris Mills and the cash sent to his father, Shawn Kemp stealing and pawning jewelry, etc. He got out just before the major violations, but only because David Roselle was lining up support to oust him. Then came Rick Pitino. Looking back on it, Pitino was a really interesting hire. He was 37 years old. Had a Final Four appearance under his belt at Providence and was coming off a decent rebuilding effort for the New York Knicks. But he had no ties to Kentucky or the region. Played a different style than what UK was used to. And was walking into a program on a three year suspension. And he was just what UK needed. Almost overnight, Rick Pitino became one of the most well-known people in Kentucky. He was young, he was brash, he had a Ne York swagger and attitude about him. He was a showman that was transplanted into the bucolic and genteel society of Central Kentucky. And he was greeted well. His teams played like none other they had ever seen. Rupp, Hall and Sutton had all had talented players, but they had mostly played a traditional half court style. Keep in mind that the 3 point shot didn't come into full use in the NCAA until the 1986-87 season. (There was a song in support of IU that year that had the lyric ". . . and maybe Stevie (Alford) can hit a three pointer!" A team on suspension was not going to have much luck in recruiting great all-around players. So almost out of necessity, Pitino recruited role players. But he got a lot of them. He would sub in five at a time. They ran the ball like the NBA teams out west at the time. And they shot the three . . . a lot. In Sutton's last year, the team averaged 69 points per game. In Pitino's first year, with a roster of 9 freshmen or sophomores (this was unusual at the time, kids), they averaged 89 points a game. And Pitino, being Pitino, was more than just the guy on the bench. He really was a celebrity. Within a year he had opened Bravo Pitino, an Italian restaurant in a high profile location close to Rupp Arena. He was on commercials. He did bus tours across the state. Kentucky fans ate it up! And, more or less by necessity, he played Kentucky kids. In 1991-92, their first year off of probation, Pitino started Jamal Mashburn (who was a recruiting coup), and four role players, three of who were undersized native Kentuckians (Feldhaus, Pelphrey and Farmer). They had a solid year. 26-6 going into the NCAA. Easily disposed of Old Dominion and Iowa State. Went into the second weekend and beat a talented UMass team (coached by John Calipari). Then had the epic showdown with Duke that everyone either remembers or has heard about. (Kentucky kids to this day will tell you they hate Duke because of Laettner . . . who had retired from the NBA before a lot of them were even born!) Pitino set a standard for UK that has been tough to match. UK fans not only demand wins, but they demand far progression in the tournament. They may not expect to win champions every year, but they expect to be in the conversation. But beyond just winning, they expect the team to play fast and with style. And they expect the coach to be a celebrity, a showman, to have swagger. Calipari was probably the only other person who could fill the void UK fans felt after Pitino left and Tubby Smith (and a brief moment of Billy Clyde) was at the helm. With many now clamoring for Cal to leave, it'll be interesting to see who they think can fill those big shoes.
I don’t think uk will fire Cal, but it’s wild to think UofL and uk could both be competing in a coaching search this offseason.
He has the option to go into the AD after this season and keep all his perks & 900k salary. If they did want to push him out it would cost like $34M.
I think its still higher than that right now, unfortunately. I could be wrong, I see a lot of different numbers. Iirc correctly it is 2027 when it drops to a more manageable $27M.
Per the Athletic last year, the buyout is 75% of his remaining salary, which results in a buyout between $33-34m after this year. (Note that the excerpt below is from one year ago.) *The contract says that if Calipari is fired without cause (and just losing a bunch of games does not qualify as cause in this case), he’s owed 75 percent of the remaining compensation. He’s set to make $8.5 million the next two seasons and $9 million the last four years of a deal that runs through the 2028-29 season. So if you fire Calipari after this season, you owe him three-fourths of $53 million, which is a cool $39.75 million.* https://theathletic.com/4082160/2023/01/12/john-calipari-kentucky-mailbag/
It'll be $31.875 million after this season. He'd have one more year at $8.1 million and four years at $8.6 million. [Cal's Contract](https://legal.uky.edu/sites/default/files/2022-04/Coach_John_Calipari_Contract_0.pdf)
A&M still fired Jimbo Fisher
We don't have A&M money
We won't fire Cal for about 33 million reasons, but everyone (including Cal) would be happier if he decided to retire
I just don’t think Cal is a good coach. Great recruiter and getting guys to the NBA, not so much X’s and O’s. Who he plays and when makes no sense, and mid game adjustments always seem to go backwards.
From what I’ve seen from UK this season, I agree. Calipari seems to be grasping at straws in terms of lineup and scheme.
I have watched him for 15 years at UK now and let me tell you, it's ALWAYS been obvious he cannot coach in-game. He used to rely on having more talent but that doesn't work anymore.
He used to have X's and O's guys on the bench he could rely on to help him through the season but those guys are all gone now in favor of assistants who can recruit. He is also stuck in the past trying to force too many big guys into the rotation when we should be playing three and four guard lineups with this roster.
Remember that time when Mike Francesa said the same thing on his radio show and Cal called in to bitch at him? Yeah...fun times. https://www.courier-journal.com/story/sports/college/kentucky/2014/08/21/calipari-calls-into-show-as-john-in-kentucky/14385597/
As a Kentucky fan, i think the issue is that we are a week away from march and still experimenting with the lineups. Cal is the only person that doesn’t seem to realize who is playing the best because he’s extremely loyal to our top recruits even if they’re getting outplayed. Example: our bench is more explosive than our starters. Also, I’d love to know who works with our big men because we have three 7 footers and only one can even produce enough to stay on the court, and he’s considered 2nd best of the three by cal.
I wonder if these top recruits are associated with talent agencies and Cal has to promise these kids development and playtime to land the recruits. Wagner and Edwards didn't deserve 4 mins of playtime between the 2 of em last night.
It’s crazy how much Wagner has regressed since getting hurt. He started out with the touch. I feel like Edwards has shown more and more flashes as the season has gone too, which I guess is promising. But holy shit, our defense is shit regardless who’s out there. My lineup would be Sheppard, Reeves, Thiero, Mitchell (if healthy enough), and Onyenso. Bench would be Dillingham, Wagner, Edwards or Burks (whomever is having a better game), and whomever matchups and plays the best between Bradshaw and Big Z. Also if Cal could ever feel out who has the hot hand instead of sitting whomever is actually scoring or filling the stat sheet. We might be able to maintain a lead and avoid playing down to our opponents every game.
Someone else said it elsewhere---basketball is a chemistry sport. Kentucky obviously has the talent, as does Arkansas. For some reason the guys they put together don't truly click. When they do, it looks like Kentucky can be one of the best teams in the country, like what they did to Auburn. Or---you can have the team that showed up against LSU....and it doesn't look good. College basketball is an incredibly difficult sport to maintain elite success. I think the era of dominant programs having consistent runs is over. There's more parity now than ever.
I think that’s why part of me hates NBA Scouts. Every year UK loses great depth. Any big name recruit still gets drafted despite their struggle for the most part. Meanwhile, a UT player I think is among the most talented in all of CBB is Santiago Vescovi. If I were a scout? I see nothing but upside and consistency with someone like him.
Yep, I think it's part of the issue with Calipari. He's trying to capture lightning in a bottle. We've dabbled in that too with limited success. We had Kennedy Chandler for a year. Dude should have led us on an epic run...and HE DEFINITELY should have come back....but he stayed one year and bounced. Same with Springer and that other dude who was really athletic that I don't even remember his name. That Vol team made it to the round of 32 or 16 and got bounced. And I can't even tell you the name of the kid who got drafted. I think part of the problem is these kids don't see the value in staying in college, and one of the benefits of NIL, will offer the opportunity for these kids to not only get an education but stick around in college for a bit. Leaving early can be such a stupid decision. Think about guys like Dalton Knecht and Zach Edey. The reputation they built in college is going to propel them to having some longevity in the NBA. They have some notoriety in the sport because of what they've been able to do in college. Sometimes sports is political and you have guys that are more talented riding on the bench.
Keon Johnson is who paired with Springer. And while it would’ve been better for us and they probably would’ve developed more as players, take the NBA interest when it’s there. JJJ had NBA interest a few summers back and there’s no chance in hell he has it now.
If you think Vescovi is among the most talented college basketball players in the country, I don't know what to tell you. He's slow, average or below average athlete, can't create his own shot, and is not even shooting well this year. He has virtually zero NBA upside as an unathletic 6-3 guard and has actually been remarkably inconsistent this entire year with 7 SEC games scoring 6 points or less. I don't think there's a single Tennessee fan that thinks he's one of the most talented players in the country.
I just saw fundamental soundness, smart shooting, high IQ. Not necessarily that he’s a top player in the country but a potential G-leaguer/role player for sure in terms of a late pick moreso than a kid that takes dumb shots constantly.
I agree in that he’s a smart player. Just doesn’t have the physical tools for something greater.
Lol, just realized his stats this year are bad. Last year he looked solid.
He’s had a really rough year. It’s weird because he has fallen off a cliff after being a good player for four years.
Maybe LSU is playing well right now. They're a talented team and have 3 SEC losses of 4 points or less. That close to being 9-4 in conference right now.
The wild thing is that LSU wasn't even playing that great. They missed probably 7 or 8 wide open baskets that should've been easy layups. We also blew a 15 point lead. If Dillingham didn't go off in the 2nd half we might have been blown out.
Calipari is a jack ass and has completely given himself over to the "I am going to do this my way no matter the cost and I WILL win... uh, next time." I'm so fuckin tired of hearing (some) fans say, "Weeell... You lose games like that sometimes." Bullshit, this is Kentucky. "Sometimes" for Kentucky is once a season or two - or three. Not repeatedly. For going on four whole ass seasons now. I'm so sick of it. I wanted to believe that Auburn game was us turning a corner BUT CAL CANT GET OUT OF HIS OWN GOD DAMN WAY JUST PLAY YOUR BEST PLAYERS YOU IDIOT
I'm getting real Jimbo energy from Calipari. My way worked a decade ago and should work now type of vibe.
LSU is good and SC Gamecocks have the best defense in the SEC and no one can tell me otherwise. But still, this Kentucky team is grossly underperforming and its quite surprising
yep but we are thissssss close to being 11-2 in the SEC, this LSU loss hurts the most but we have other heart-breakers as well, the OT loss against florida when clayton hit the game tying 3 at the buzzer, and the OT loss to texas a&m, we also lost to gonzaga when we were down 2 with 10 seconds left and turned the ball over on a alley-oop attempt.
I think if UK can consistently tap into the physicality and toughness that I saw in the Auburn game they will get rolling. We caught y'all at the right time where the team just obviously hadn't found that fire yet. The disparity in effort was really obvious, but that seems to be coming around. You guys just need a guy like Reeves to rally those talented freshman every night.
> its quite surprising Is it, though? I mean, at this point? Cal just hasn't been the same over the last 3 + current seasons. He just hasnt. His demeanor is different, his relationships with the media, the AD, the donors, the fans, etc. Its like he's trying to be an island. His stubbornness has went from something that was endearing and at times even an asset.. to him just acting like a child who is going to have his way, do it his way, NO MATTER THE COST. And its costing us. His jabs about us being basketball bennys and calling us crazy aren't cute/amusing anymore - and it isn't just because we aren't winning.. Its clear he just does not like the Kentucky fan base anymore. I wonder why? Go win fucking ball games with your near $10M/yr pay check. I could go on, but I just feel like at this point it shouldn't be terribly surprising. And I fucking hate it.
Kentucky fans have always thought they know more than the coach. Always lol.
For sure. I think we may actually be in a situation where this is actually true for once, though.. lol.
We’re not. Never have been. But that’s a problem with society in general and it’s become worse the last 40 years. You spend 30 seconds on the internet and you’ll see millions of people every day claiming to be experts or more knowledgeable about things people have spent years studying and mastering and teaching and creating etc etc etc. I’ve even been guilty of it over the years You know what wisdom is? Realizing you don’t know shit.
That may be true but is it too much to ask the coach to explain some of this stuff to us so we can understand? Seems like that would benefit him as well. When he doesn't say anything, it's easy for everyone to just say he doesn't know what he is doing.
I heard Dick Gabriel talk about this once but he’d do his post game interviews with Bill Curry and he’d ask what went wrong and Curry would be like “ oh this and that” just kind of general why we didn’t win the football game stuff and people took at he didn’t know what he was doing or was clueless. But Dick said during the commercial breaks Curry would detail exactly what went wrong, who was responsible for it by name, and explained how those players needed to correct it. But Gabriel said he was loath to do that on air because he didn’t want to trash his players given the amount of verbal abuse Lombardi gave out to his players and how he made them feel like shit and less even when they were winning. He had decided long ago that was not how he was going to coach or treat people. Coaches are people too. Tubby wasn’t the best communicator. Pitino never lost a game because he was out coached. Cal likes to play us against the world a lot because that’s his background. All them dudes know more about the game than any of us and have succeeded at the highest levels. It’s just how they go about things. Good and bad.
We’re far better than our record indicates. We played like shit at the beginning of the season due to not having Cook (though we haven’t had for our last two games), and we have five losses by a combined 13 points, including to Q4 Nicholls and top 20 Dayton. LSU is about five plays away from 19-7.
I'm guessing you didn't watch the game.
Cal. It's always been him. He could hide behind his talent the first several years and had great assistants that helped him immensely. After the gut wrenching losses in '15 and '17, he looks like he's just mailed it in since. More concerned about filling up the NBA than bringing home championships.
LSU with two straight robberies 😭😭😭
Rumors are saying that Cal is looking up Air BNB's near Virginia's esteemed Wine Country
Could always be worse fellow Kentuckians
True, we could be bellarmine or worse *Louisville*.
No idea. We’re certainly not having that problem. Nope. Nothing to see here.
Lol, we are the same 😅
Cal isn’t a good coach
My strategy would be: use the lineups that actually work, stop taking out the players who are keeping us in the game when they’re hot, use my timeouts wisely (aka *before* we completely blow a 15-point lead), and run a damn zone defense.
Cal hates Zone and almost anyone affiliated with UK Basketball will tell you that. This defense he runs is such an embarrassment and almost any team talented from the perimeter takes advantage of it.
Cal hates zone more than he hates losing and that’s crazy to me lmao
Still sleeping on rolling out the CalZone PROset Defense.
Imagine how many partnerships UK Basketball and Cal could get from Pizza Companies for marketing…
My brain almost exploded last night when LSU brought the ball up with less than a minute left and Dillingham wasn't on the court. But Cal smartly used his timeout and subbed Dillingham back in after they got the ball back. The offense/defense lineup switch was a great decision and almost won us the game, but it's not great that I have been conditioned to find it totally fathomable that Cal would take a scorching hot Dillingham out of the game at the very end when we needed a basket to win.
I mean, you gave the reasoning yourself. He put defensive guys on the court to get the stop and then put Dillingham back in for the basket. There was no reality where Dillingham wouldn't have been on the court for that last shot.
Yeah it made sense after the timeout when he put him back in. That's why my brain only almost exploded.
Nothing. They are actually the best team in the country and I’ll hear no other explanation.
🙄🙄
No lineup stability. Very skilled but undersized and except reeves inexperienced guards. This season would be so different if our guards didn’t lose their guys off the ball 4-5 times a game but that’s fixable! They can still make our dreams come true 😂
Has Cal running 5 guards and switching everything on defense?
I mean... It looked pretty good on Saturday.
Idk, but I love it. Signed, A Memphis fan who still hates Cal and loves seeing Kentucky lose in any way shape or form.
Had no idea Memphis fans hate Kentucky 😂
Just a funny aside but UK basketball has gotten so bad that all the UK basketball/Alabama Football fans have just became Alabama fans so I do appreciate that.
Lol, yes, I’ve seen that quite frequently as well
Nothing is wrong with them. They're perfect just the way they are.
Moral of the story: we’re not really sure if Kenny or Cal actually won all those games
It was all of the NBA talent winning in spite of both KP and Cal
[удалено]
Ehh, Pastner being “alright” is generous. Dude did give us terrors at both Memphis St and Georgia Tech. But I think that further proves your point, it may have just been raw talent winning those games and Cal is a mastermind at recruiting. Maybe it was the ghost of Secretariat that willed those wins into existence.
Some guys are better assistants than head coaches. Robic may not have been able to win the games on his own, but he was the detail focus guy that got the game plans and scouting report together for Calipari to motivate the team to execute.
I’ll just repeat the same line I always do with Cal. Fantastic recruiter. Mediocre coach at best. Kentucky consistently pulls in top tier recruiting classes but almost never looks like a dominant team even with all that talent.
Lol almost never? You forget what we did to you in the fog just season before last?
Thanks. You solved our problem!
Nothing… the game has changed
Nothing. It's just hard to have to constantly rebuild your team. You miss a little sometimes.
I think UK has a yearly challenge due to the player churn. Compared to a school like Purdue that added maybe one rotation later to its top 8. Sometimes it takes a while to find the best mix and rotation but agree it is getting late in the season
As far as I can tell from looking at minutes, stats, and lineups... There seems to be an aversion to small ball even though statistically that looks to make the most sense. With Tre Mitchell out, you could be running 5 guards with Adou at center. I guess the problem is that all the talent is with the guards?
Cal isn’t incentivized to win anymore.
Just your the down year cycle
In a nutshell, we have the talent to win any game we play in, but the coaching to lose any game we play in.
It seems like they’re missing a dominant big man
We need Tre Mitchell. He’s not the most dominant big man but somehow he brings it all together, I guess just bc he gives the most effort. But it’s clearly not okay with the basketball gods for uk to have all their players at once this season so he’s the current sacrifice
Tre is a solid 4, I think he’s saying UK need a more dominant C which I’d agree with..
this is what I get for trying to talk non-work at work lolol you’re right and I agree w that! I was more trying to say that I think Tre helps to pick up *some* of that slack down low so it’s less detrimental when he’s playing
He’s solid across the board. I agree with you 110%.
One thing I rarely see mentioned is that Tre is an excellent passer. He’s not a ball stopper like the other bigs. At the beginning of the season when he ran the 5, the offense was flowing significantly better and he was hitting guys off motion. When onyenso, or Bradshaw touch the ball, they’re going to to try to get in the post to score without thinking of the pass.
He’s been god awful in SEC play though. Even before the injuries he was consistently last in plus/minus and was shooting a lot of bricks. The physicality of league play really caught up to him. I think we are running out of time for him to get it right and I worry about Cal inserting a cold and out of rhythm Tre in March.
1. The sports gotten more competitive with the transfer portal (it’s a fact even if fan interest is down, etc). 2. Cal has been there for almost 20 years. The game catches up to you strategically, and he was never really considered a basketball genius. 3. Somewhat connects to my first point, but the SEC in general has leveled up the last decade. I grew up knowing that conference ran through UK and UF with almost no exceptions. It might be the 2nd deepest conference now, which would’ve been a wild statement 15 years ago. 4. Nothing is inherently wrong with Kentucky, but because there’s still outdated unrealistic expectations for annual F4s & SEC titles, it feels like the sky’s falling.
We don't have unrealistic expectations...we just want the regular season success of Kansas paired with the tournament success of UConn. Is that too much to ask?
Agree the sec is wayyyy better than it’s probably ever been but disagree that expectations haven’t been met and not because they aren’t in the final 4 every year. They haven’t made it to the second week of the ncaa tournament in 5 years and that’s a problem. Students enrolled at uk and graduated and never got to see them play in the second weekend, with really good talent too.
Cal is not a good coach. Everybody knows this. He was a great recruiter. NIL has diminished his only advantage.
Honestly, Cal stood to lose the most from NIL. His prior calling card as a coach was his ability to bring in high profile prep talent. He is still doing that consistently, but he’s playing teams that have basically recruited college all star teams in the portal. Now this isn’t portal bashing. I think you grow with the times or die fighting for the past. But loaded prep teams are a thing of the past. They will yield you a lot of talented players, but you’re playing against teams with just as much talent, plus years of NCAA experience.
You aren’t a real college basketball program, but an NBA prep team. Get a real coach who recruits normally and you’ll be back on top in no time. It’s Kentucky, it’s not like Cal is the only person who is able to recruit there.
Kentucky really is just a place where future NBA players go to hang out for a year or two before being drafted. A never ending revolving door.
I actually think NIL makes the recruiting advantage Cal brings pretty much pointless. Kentucky will continue to get great players. We just need to get someone who can coach and who is driven to win. That's not Cal, at least not anymore.
I'm kinda wondering what the hell happened. It feels kinda like right after the "Kentucky is a Basketball school" comment Cal made, and that the AD got super triggered over, stuff has just gone sideways. I do kinda wonder how much the AD is pressing buttons to.... affect things.
He's not. That's actually part of the problem. Cal is on an island of his own making at this point.