The pressure could be mounting on John Calipari to deliver another championship at UK

BleedGopher

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per CBS:

John Clay, a longtime writer at the Lexington Herald-Leader, used his column this past weekend to ask a question that hints at the type of pressure Kentucky's Hall of Fame coach might find himself under now that he likely will, once again, have the nation's top-ranked team in the preseason: Should John Calipari have more than one NCAA title?

Clay's answer was ... yes.

And I agree -- although, as Clay correctly notes, it's a complicated thing to consider and forces you to balance a championship-or-bust mentality with big-picture success that's unmatched elsewhere in the sport. For instance, when discussing Calipari, you can simply highlight that he's made four Final Fours in the past nine years, which is twice as many as any other coach in that same span. That's undeniably terrific. But, on the other hand, it is true that it's all amounted to only one national championship, which can be used by critics to suggest the man who has been assembling high-level teams more often than anybody is actually underachieving.

It's a thing that's hovered above Calipari forever.

He's been a No. 1 seed in the NCAA Tournament six different times in his career -- at UMass in 1996, at Memphis in 2006 and 2008, at Kentucky in 2010, 2012 and 2015 -- and only has one championship to show for it. But Calipari has been so close so many other times that it's fascinating to consider the possibilities.

Let me walk you through it.

If Calipari's Tigers, in the 2006 Elite Eight, had beaten a UCLA team it had already beaten earlier in the season, Memphis would've been the only No. 1 seed at the Final Four. Instead, the Tigers shot 11.8 percent from 3-point range in that game and were eliminated, clearing the way for Florida, as a No. 3 seed, to win the championship. Then, two years later, Calipari's Tigers were famously up nine points on Kansas with 1:58 left in the 2008 championship game. If they don't collapse, or if Mario Chalmers doesn't make that shot, Calipari would've had what would've been his first national title. Alas, they did collapse -- and Chalmers did make that shot. And Memphians remain haunted by it to this day. Beyond that, you can reasonably argue Calipari had the nation's most talented and best team in 2010, 2012 and 2015. But only one of those teams (2012) even played for the championship. And though nobody would describe Calipari's 2014 Wildcats as great, they did advance to the title game of the NCAA Tournament and were 2.5-point favorites at tipoff over a UConn team that finished tied for third in the American Athletic Conference.

UK lost that game 60-54.

https://www.cbssports.com/college-b...-to-deliver-another-championship-to-kentucky/

Go Gophers!!
 

UK had a very, very good team two years ago that could have won it but it does seem his teams don't perform to the full level of the talent.
Neither does Duke for that matter.
 

UK had a very, very good team two years ago that could have won it but it does seem his teams don't perform to the full level of the talent.
Neither does Duke for that matter.

That probably has a lot to do with the fact that their young players simply aren't prepared for that kind of pressure. Napier was a senior that year and in the title game, it showed.
 

Of course even if Memphis hadn't collapsed, or if Chalmers doesn't make that shot, they would have had to vacate their championship anyway because their best player was academically ineligible all season long. So Cal still would have his lone national title.
 



https://www.ncaa.com/news/basketball-men/bracketiq/2017-12-14/march-madness-brackets-how-do-seeds-perform-final-four

Seeds do matter...20 number one seeds have been champions in the last 30 something years. But complaining about only getting to Final Fours is pretty foolish imo 4 number one seeds X 35 years equals 140 teams...
No tougher Jun than Kentucky when it comes to fan expectations. Seems like Cal is focusing less on the one and fines and taking more 2-3 year guys to counter to lack of experience. There still five stars so it's not like they suck.

Sent from my XT1650 using Tapatalk
 




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