I love it. I knew his bullshit would catch up with him sooner or later. You can't sustain any type of long term success with a complete roster turnover ever year. It also doesn't help him that he's been horribly overrated as a coach for a while now.

http://sports.yahoo.com/news/you-made-your-bed-john-calipari--now-lie-in-it-233738456-ncaab.html

As his program crash-landed at rock bottom Saturday at South Carolina, John Calipari excused himself from the proceedings. He got himself tossed by the officials, and then blew off the press conference after his Kentucky Wildcats lost to a team ranked No. 178 in America according to the RPI.

When the going got tough, Cal got out.

It was a nostalgic flashback to December, when Calipari made a four-minute postgame interview appearance after losing to Baylor, then abruptly got up and left when the first question was directed toward one of his players. His freshmen sat there and answered the rest of the queries without him.

Had Calipari shown up to answer questions Saturday after the worst defeat of his Kentucky tenure, instead of sending assistant John Robic and two freshmen to the interview room, here are the questions Calipari should have been asked.

Q: Your preseason No. 1 team should by all rights fall out of the top 25 this week. What has happened to the squad that had you dancing in the car on the way to the office in October?

Q: The season is not lost, but it's headed that direction at a high rate of speed. What are you going to do about it?


Kentucky coach John Calipari questions a call. (AP)
Q: Is it still Ryan Harrow's fault? That poor kid – who you recruited – was the scapegoat last year. He was the point guard who didn't run the team the way you wanted, and thus was run off to Georgia State. Archie Goodwin went pro with minimum lamentation. Kyle Wiltjer transferred, and nobody blinked. They all left under a cloud of blame that accompanied a trip to the NIT and a humiliating first-round loss to Robert Morris.

"The stuff I had to accept this year, the program almost got hijacked," you said last spring. "Never in my career have I surrendered in any way to any team, and I did at times this year – to try to save guys, to try to help guys – and it never works."

Harrow's stats are similar to those of your current point guard, five-star recruit Andrew Harrison. Harrow played about four minutes per game less and averaged slightly fewer points, rebounds and assists – but he had a better assist-turnover ratio and shot better from two-point range.

But stats can be misleading. Can we still pile this disappointing season on the 2012-13 bunch?

Q: If not Harrow & Co., is it time to throw the Greatest Recruiting Class in College Basketball history under the Big Blue bus? You've started moving in that direction recently, Cal.

After losing to Arkansas at home Thursday, you mentioned "a couple no-shows" without naming names. And you blamed forward Julius Randle for wearing down by not taking himself out of the lineup. "I'm trying to get guys to sub themselves," you said. "They just don't get it." For $5.2 million a year, you'd think the coach could add "manage the substitution rotation" to his list of responsibilities, as opposed to leaving it up to the players. Who are young. (Stop me if you've heard this before: Kentucky has a young team.)

Then there was your comment to the Kentucky radio crew Saturday night: "They're counting on me too much." Apparently we are reaching the Pontius Pilate stage of the season, where the coach washes his hands and turns an increasingly unpleasant endeavor over to the unpaid laborers.

Q: But if it's not the players' fault, and they weren't all massively overrated coming out of high school, who hasn't done the job of coalescing them into a team?

Q: As a follow-up: Who recruited these guys again? And called them "alpha males" and raved about the renewed breed of nasty that would return Kentucky to national championship contention? Who cornered the market on one-year transient players – when it was a bull market (Wall, Cousins, Davis, Kidd-Gilchrist) and when it's a bear market?



The Wildcats have lost their last two games, to South Carolina on Saturday and Arkansas on Thursday.
Q: What happened to this plan: "What we're going to have is unbelievable competition. We may have three teams, so 15 guys that can play. Let's go." That was the antidote for a "hijacking" – the bench. Guys who were not playing well were going to sit.
Instead, you've played seven guys. Four players – Julius Randle, James Young and the Harrison twins – average more than 30 minutes per game. Last year, Team Hijack had three players averaging that many minutes. When it comes to playing time, there is little disincentive for poor performance. The stars get the minutes, even if they aren't getting the job done.

Q: Jim Boeheim made an idiot of himself in a loss at Duke the week before, but he showed up at the postgame press conference to answer for it. Cincinnati's Mick Cronin made an idiot of himself on the sidelines Saturday in a loss to Connecticut, but he took questions afterward. If they can do it, why not you?

Q: In October you proclaimed, "We are college basketball." Does that mean this entire college basketball season has been a disappointment? Because it doesn't feel that way, but we want to be sure.

Q: If February you proclaimed this to be the most overanalyzed team in the history of sports. Are five losses in a weak SEC a clever ploy to slow down the rampant analysis of the Wildcats?

Q: Can the 40-0 T-shirts people have been using to wax their cars be forwarded to the good people of Wichita? Just in case?

Q: Kentucky fans used to derisively call Tubby Smith "Ten-Loss Tubby." You are two defeats away from a second straight season with double-digit losses. If the moniker "Ten-Loss Cal" starts being thrown around, how will you take it?

Q: Did you know that the two Kentucky teams relying solely on your recruits as the major contributors are last year and this year? And that their record is 42-20, 23-11 in the SEC, with an NIT berth and four losses to teams ranked outside the Ken Pomeroy top 100?

Q: Did you know that your first three teams at Kentucky all had veteran players recruited by previous coaches in key roles? Those teams went a combined 102-14, 40-18 in the Southeastern Conference, with two SEC titles, two SEC tournament titles, two Final Four appearances and a national title.

Those last two are rhetorical questions, by the way. No need to answer.

When you've proven that you have it SO figured out, then it starts to suddenly not work as well, you're likely to be wildly embarrassed too. And that's ok if you man up and admit responsibility like the millionaire championship-winning adult that you are.

Now the problem with Saban and Calipari is the stunning lack of accountability, and the consistent sacrificing of BOYS when their master plans blow up in their pompous faces. It really will disgust you if you think about it too much.

and i'm enjoying Kentucky struggles.

but them dudes just need another year. even randle.
now will they stay? most likely no. but they should.

<--- Big Baller World Order

That's real?

Good luck with that one.

at least when Roy isn't doing hockey subs out of anger.

<--- Big Baller World Order

.

...I'm from the era when A.I. was the answer, now they think ai is the answer - Marlon Craft

<---https://www.amazon.com/dp/B01DL9AVTQ

Cuonzo Martin was an awful hire. Another gift by our previous athletic director, who also gave us Kiffin, Dooley, Todd Raliegh (baseball coach who just got fired - he was the worst of the bunch) and hung Pearl out to dry.

I hope we don't make the tournament this year so Cuonzo gets fired. Sucks, but I think that's in our best interest, long-term. If he squeaks into the tournament, they're going to be forced to extend him a few years, and his awful recruiting is really going to show up and give us some *terrible* seasons. Next year will be brutal regardless of who is coaching us.

I would say I'm gonna stop putting freshman-reliant teams as preseason #1, but since I'll likely put Duke at preseason #1 next year, I wouldn't actually mean it.

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There's part of me that loves it, because Cal opens himself up to it with his back-and-forth with the media (not coming out and answering questions WAS ridiculous, he could've easily delayed his radio show), and because it's fun watching a Titan fall on its face.

That having been said, it conveniently ignores that Cal is playing Russian Roulette. He knows the risk when he stacks the desk with young egos. Get the right ones, and you can win it all. Get the wrong ones, and it's a down year. Just because his two down years are the first two that are solely his players doesn't mean the Russian Roulette game can't find a full chamber in the future.

Should this team be better? Obviously, and much of that is on the coaching... but then again, if Cal wins another using this approach (odds are he will), is it still a terrible bed to lay in? I think the article would have been better served analyzing the failures of the last two years instead of drawing the conclusion that Cal isn't a good coach or that this strategy won't pay dividends when Cal is left exclusively to his own devices.

But, again, it's a fun read. Just as if Duke was approaching double-digit losses, folks would enjoy reading that takedown piece, or Kansas, or UNC. It's fun watching a favorite suffer.

My movies: http://russellhainline.com
My movie reviews: https://letterboxd.com/RussellHFilm/
My beer TikTok: https://www.tiktok.com/@thebeertravelguide

>Just as if Duke was approaching
>double-digit losses, folks would enjoy reading that takedown
>piece, or Kansas, or UNC. It's fun watching a favorite
>suffer.

But I wondered how you were going to work in your estimation of how much ppl care about Duke

This is about Cal, not Kentucky

Word?

I realize it's more about Cal, but it's also because Cal is Kentucky's coach-- if he was still at Memphis, no one would care about a Cal takedown, mostly because he wouldn't be able to turn around one-and-dones that way if he wasn't in Lexington.

If K bombs next year with Okafor, Jones, and Winslow, and someone writes a brutal negative piece about him, you don't think it'd get a billion hits?

My movies: http://russellhainline.com
My movie reviews: https://letterboxd.com/RussellHFilm/
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Its one thing to have a flop year, but its another to be an asshole about it

Unless K starts talking and acting like Cal there will never be a Duke equivalent

Partly because no one hates Kentucky. Other than the year they cashed in, Kentucky hasnt been a serious threat to win a NC in like 15 years so there isnt any success to resent unless its on the recruiting trail.

But mostly its because for all his quasi-ridiculous sideline antics, K's integrity seems much less subject to reproach.

<-- BAUGH SO HARD

*Jews you*

"this is okp tho, reading is completely optional" (c) desus

Proceed with caution. I am overtly racist.

<-- In Pigpen we trust

Myself included. I didn't think they had this run in them.

big L.

<-- BAUGH SO HARD

________________________________________
"Take the surprise out your voice Shaq."-The REAL CP3
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=v2H5K-BUMS0

http://sports.yahoo.com/news/that-bed-john-calipari-made-for-himself-is-looking-pretty-comfortable-these-days-022251532-ncaab.html

Questions for John Calipari, Take Two. Four weeks ago, I took the Kentucky basketball coach to task because he appeared to be abdicating responsibility in the midst of a massively underachieving season. That column can be read here. It was harsh, and there were a lot of Kentucky fans who agreed with it – no matter what they're saying now – because I heard from them.

Today, with a Final Four berth in hand, it's appropriate and fair to praise him in the same fashion. So let me ask a few things:

How did you do it, Cal?

How did you get a team that couldn't beat 14-20 South Carolina on March 1 to regroup like that?

How did you turn four weeks in March into a triumph of tournament coaching?

How did a dysfunctional unit go on a tear that has it closing in on my Best Case Scenario for this NCAA tournament?

How did you get them to believe that the postseason was going to be different? There was "The Tweak," of course, going into the SEC tournament – but was that strategy or a psych job? Actually, never mind, it doesn't matter what it really was. The only thing that matters is that it worked.

How did you get a group that was swept by Arkansas – an NIT team – to win three straight blockbuster, epic, quien-es-mas-macho duels in the caldron of NCAA tournament pressure? How did you beat unbeaten Wichita State? How did you scramble back at the end to beat Louisville? How did you outshoot the brilliant bombers from Michigan?

How did your bunch of freshmen manage to make the key plays, while the experienced teams succumbed?



How did you get the Harrison twins, Andrew and Aaron, playing like lottery picks? Remember when they had fallen completely off the draft boards, and when everyone was ripping their games, and when the consensus in the commonwealth was that Andrew's unproductive play was the biggest reason why Kentucky lost 10 games?

How did you get Aaron Harrison to become the teenage version of Big Shot Bob Horry? In Kentucky's last four regular-season losses, against Florida (at home and on the road), and at Arkansas and South Carolina, he went 10 for 42 from the field. Through four games in the NCAA tournament, he is 13 for 24 from behind the 3-point line and the four 3s he cold-bloodedly drained in the final four minutes against Michigan on Sunday – including the game-winner – will be remembered for decades by the Big Blue faithful.

How do you work such a radical makeover of two freshmen in virtually no time at all?

How did you get Julius Randle past his layup yips? How did you get James Young through his boom-and-bust cycles? How did you get your occasionally MIA centers to exert a dominant presence? How did you get Alex Poythress to be assertive all the time, as opposed to maybe 33 percent of the time?

Shoot, how did you get through two Midwest regional battles in Indianapolis with center Willie Cauley-Stein playing a total of four minutes? When he went down with an injury early against Louisville, that gave the Cardinals an opening – and they couldn't take advantage. It did the same for Michigan – and the Wolverines couldn't take advantage.

The biggest reason Michigan couldn't capitalize was the revelatory play of Marcus Lee – and let's talk about him for a minute, Cal. HOW ON EARTH did you get that performance out of Lee? The sell job must have been an all-timer. Until he suddenly became Blake Griffin on Sunday, Lee had the following stat line over the previous 10 games: five DNPs, zero points, two rebounds. Naturally, he shows up on the biggest stage of the year and dunks everything that comes off the rim (and a couple that didn't come off the rim, but that's a different subject). He puts up 10 points and eight rebounds and blocks two shots.



I'll be honest, Cal: I forgot Lee was on the team. But you clearly kept him engaged, kept him confident – and you trusted him early in a huge game. The response was the Kentucky version of Tim Henderson's two 3-pointers in the Final Four for Louisville last year against Wichita State. It was a season-saving performance nobody saw coming.

That is great coaching.

Now this needs to be said, too: You're going to the Final Four with a team that is 100 percent of your making, and a team that is almost completely dependent upon freshmen. After providing about 64 games of ammunition since the 2012 title to those who weren't sure one-and-done was a sustainable way to build a program, you've supplied a powerful rebuttal. Three Final Fours in four seasons says that your way works – it works better than any other way currently being implemented in college basketball.

You proved your point, and your team is still playing. How good does that feel?

<--- Big Baller World Order

-------------------
I wanna go to where the martyrs went
the brown figures on the walls of my apart-a-ment...