Yes, I'm savoring the sweet schadenfruede from seeing Kentucky's bid for an undefeated season go down in flames amid all of those sad faces. Hey, I'm human, and it's only natural for me to get some satisfaction from Kentucky's failures. I grew up in Louisville as a Cardinals fan and interacted with UK supporters who, as recently as the late 1990s, were openly racist in their basketball fandom (this attitude, since muted, still occasionally flares out in the open). There also is the race-neutral insufferableness of Kentucky fans as a group.
Indeed, civilized society owes Wisconsin its gratitude.
(Apologies to my fair-minded UK friends who acknowledge the many ignorant and insufferable among their ranks and dislike them as much as I do).
It's personal for me, but I'm more fascinated with this UK's loss from an analytical/philosophical perspective. What now to make of Kentucky under John Calipari? All of those McDonald's All-Americans (20 and counting), first-round NBA draft picks (15 and more to come) and Drake shout-outs (not gonna count them) have equaled just one championship in six seasons. And that one title was courtesy of Anthony Davis, who may end up being the best player of his generation.
It's weird that you can make a coherent argument that a program with four Final Four appearances in Calipari's six seasons is more hype than substance. It's even stranger that such an argument can't be dismissed out of hand. How can going 38-1 and reaching the Final Four be considered a flop?
But even Kentucky's players knew it was true in the aftermath. Said freshman Tyler Ulis: "It's very tough because we basically went through the whole season winning all those games for nothing."
Somehow this view is both insane and reasonable. Such are the circumstances for the Wildcats, for several reasons.
Foremost among them is Kentucky's fan base, which expects championships in every season. I have UCLA friends I've known for many years who never mention the Bruins' 11 NCAA national championships. You are not likely to spend much time around a Kentucky basketball fan without some boastful reference to the team's eight titles. There is a decent chance that said fan will do so while wearing paraphernalia that references said titles and/or the their rightful claim to more of them.
National championships are pretty much all that matter to UK but it's hard as hell to win a 64-team, single-elimination tournament. Kentucky was even odds to do it this year and couldn't in spite of a relatively easy path to the title. The Wildcats played all of their games within commuting distance of Lexington (Louisville, Cleveland, Indianapolis) and fielded a team with eight McD's All-Americans and no fewer than four players projected to be drafted in the first round this year.
It takes talent to win a championship but it also takes luck. I noted before the tournament that Kentucky, beginning with its Cinderella NCAA Tournament run in 2014, had been unusually lucky by winning more close games than chance suggests they should. That luck finally ran out against an opponent suited to take advantage of Kentucky's weaknesses, which were masked by playing in the SEC.
You could tell as soon as Kentucky tipped against Notre Dame in the Elite Eight that it had been many weeks since the Wildcats faced elite competition. They escaped that game only to be bested by Wisconsin, another quality opponent from a better conference.
Kentucky had a great, historic season that wasn’t enough. What does that mean for Kentucky and Calipari?
Even as Calipari is elected to the Hall of Fame (with two vacated Final Four appearances on his record), no one is calling him a great tactician. This is the second time his team blew a late lead when within a hair of a title, after the same happened with Memphis in the 2008 championship game. Calipari last week bizarrely declared he didn't think his team needed to watch much video of Wisconsin, and then appeared flummoxed as the Wildcats had three shot-clock violations at crunch time.
There are other negatives from UK's perspective. You can sometimes get Wildcats fans to admit they don't like Calipari's "Players First," NBA-centric approach. This led him to famously declare 2010 draft night the "biggest day in the history of Kentucky's program" because five Wildcats were selected in the first round after failing to reach the Final Four.
That stung Kentucky fans who are obsessed with the program's history but they figure Calipari’s hyperbolic salesmanship, distasteful as it may be, is the price to pay for him to collect the best players. He is unequaled as a recruiter, and he did manage to get this star-studded team to 38 wins with few major signs of dissension until the bitter end. Calipari also has dominated the head-to-head rivalry with the Cardinals--though Louisville’s one championship, two Final Four bids (with last week's near-miss) and three 30-win seasons over that time (with just one first-round pick) ain’t half bad.
Also, in spite of missteps such as his 2010 draft night declaration, Calipari is skilled at catering to the weird mix of arrogance and insecurity that makes up the collective psyche of the Kentucky fan base. They accepted Calipari as coach, overlooking their previous hatred of him and their suspicions about his NCAA compliance record, because they were desperate to be relevant again and win more championships.
But do they feel the same now that all of the hype has resulted in one championship in six seasons, with this year’s insanely-talented team not even able to make the title game? To be happy with Calipari requires them to accept that national championships are not all that matter, which is not in their nature.
I want to say Kentucky fans would be crazy not to be pleased with Calipari--who doesn't want four Final Fours, a championship and a runner-up finish in six years? But, bizarrely, I can’t fault them if they are not happy with Alipari because of the baggage that's come with that one title and the realization that always having the best players doesn't assure more championships.
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