regardless of the new crop of newcomers that comes into Big Blue Country. In Cal We Trust. Whether it’ s after the oodles of victories or the small handful of defeats, Cal will usually mention the seemingly few flaws of his team. They’ re usually mental flaws that he hopes will get corrected by the time the NCAA Tournament rolls around.
More often than not, Cal blames these flaws on his team’ s never-ending youth. As expected as death and taxes.
But this season has been different. The Cats are taking unusual losses – unusual for Big Blue Nation, at least. It’ s not like they’ re going to miss the tournament or anything.
But the usual Cal quotes have been modified. This is a rarity.
Consider: Earlier in the season, after a 29-point shellacking of rival Louisville, the UK coach did the unthinkable. He was going to stop referring to that youth.
“ I said today before the game, we’ re no longer freshmen,” Calipari said after another victory in the rivalry back in December.“ I’ m not saying it anymore – we’ re not freshmen now. We’ re 10 games in, 11 games in, we are not freshmen.”
Then, in a mid-January loss at home against lowly South Carolina, Calipari went back to his old, youth-based excuses for his team’ s inability to play at the level commensurate to the Kentucky head coach’ s expectations had returned.
“ This looked like a bunch of freshmen playing,” Calipari said after his team’ s 76-68 collapse at South Carolina.
“ The first half, you would look and say,‘ Ah, they got a nice team and da da da da.’ They’ re all freshmen. In the second half, you looked at us and we looked like a bunch of freshmen playing like freshmen would play.”
Cal used the word“ freshmen” three times before he took one breath.
Perhaps the players aren’ t the only ones reverting to old childlike habits.
The surprise isn’ t that the excuses had returned, it’ s that Cal tried to make those disappear in the first place. Weird. And then on top of that has been the cryptic way in which he’ s talked about one of his six( SIX!) five-star freshmen recruits.
Jarred Vanderbilt injured his foot early in the preseason and hadn’ t played a game up until the aforementioned loss to South Carolina. It had been Vanderbilt’ s third injury to the same foot. That is a true worry for a player seemingly-destined to be less than a calendar year away from having a seven-annual income.
Kentucky had needed him. And people had seen reports of him continuously practicing and dressing for games.
But Vanderbilt still wasn’ t seeing the court, and Calipari was being uncharacteristically and mostlyindirectly criticizing Vanderbilt’ s inability to play.
“ I’ d like for him to give me more than what I would’ ve gotten today because I didn’ t see him all day,” Calipari said.
It was like there was more to the story. Who knows?
“ The problem with being injured when you’ re on my teams, I really spend no time with you,” Calipari said.“ Sometimes I forget names. Like I forget who( Vanderbilt) is. Because I’ ve gotta focus on the guys I’ m coaching right now. They’ ve gotta get healthy and be ready to come back and be ready to go. Jarred is the same.” He forgets his players’ names? Come on. Calipari is always a master of the media. His press conferences are always entertaining. But this year, it’ s just been different. Different than in any other season. It’ s been over the top.
THE CURIOUS CASE OF DAVID PADGETT
The most curious case of all has been David Padgett. The poor guy got thrown into an absolute grease fire.
So, of course, his team floundered around for awhile while the players acclimated to a coaching style that is, by many accounts, far more relaxed than the style of their coaching predecessor, Rick Pitino.
The feeling I got from Pitino before his firing was that if Donovan Mitchell, currently one of the NBA’ s best rookies, left for the pros after last season, it was going to be an uphill climb for this season’ s championship hopes.
No surprise there. Mitchell is a star. Any team would hurt if they lost a kid like Mitchell.
Obviously, this was before Pitino got gifted Brian Bowen, the highly-touted recruit whose family member, we later learned, allegedly agreed to receive money to come to Louisville, which, in part, may have ended up being the final nail in Pitino’ s Cardinal Coffin.
Since then, Padgett has had to do a dance of trying to be himself to his team, while still trying to cling to many Pitino’ s championship principles.
Now, many Pitino loyalists, who are still bitter about the way“ Slick Rick” was dismissed are taking out the team’ s struggles on Padgett.“ The players aren’ t listening to him.”“ Padgett’ s lost this team. This would’ ve never
( have) happened to Rick.” We got it, Rick-backers, winning trumps all, even multiple NCAA violations. Duly noted. But, for the rest of us that think Pitino’ s firing was justified, even if we admired his coaching ability( I know I did), there was really no other way to bring on a brand-new coach that had any sort of resume.
UofL had two weeks to figure this out, for crying out loud. What were they supposed to do?
Had Louisville brought on a seasoned, but recently-fired coach, that coach isn’ t going to just agree to a one-year deal. And even if they do, what if they had success? Then, Louisville would’ ve had to stick with the guy, a guy they had all but a handful of days to truly vet. The timing was terrible. Still, Padgett is taking a team that likely wasn’ t destined for the Final Four and, as of this writing, has gone the whole season with just a handful of losses – none of them to teams outside the AP Top 25.
It’ s been a fascinating watch.
HERE’ S A CURIOUS BONUS
And, alone at the top, probably sipping on a Mai Tai and cackling at all the other nonsense going on south of West Lafayette, is Matt-freaking-Painter. Who knew he’ d be the one with the stress meter, relatively speaking, at zero?
What an unusual college hoops landscape, indeed.
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