Let's talk about unadulterated results. Simply winning games in the NCAA tournament. That's it. No qualifiers. No situational analysis. Which coach has won more games in the tournament year-in and year-out with their squads? Last 5 years? Last 10 years?
Who'da thunk it? Coach Cal wins. In the last five years, Calipari's got a Runner-Up, a Final Four, two Elite Eights, and a Sweet Sixteen. Looks good moving into the future. His team (every single year) is in a major position to do some damage in the tournament. You can claim that he has put together a roster or two or three that's underperformed to its talent level ... but he still wins more games consistently once he reaches the postseason than any of the other coaches out there. The crazy one in this span is the fact that Coach K is sixth even with last year's championship. He'd be going on a near disastrous run since 2004 if it wasn't for that one. Calhoun is the coach that's the most bi-polar. His rosters are built to compete for championships and then completely fall apart and take a few years to even sniff competing again. The only other thing you need to note is that Bruce Weber blows.
Over a full decade's span, Roy Williams displays his dominance despite a fluke NIT appearance two years ago. Calhoun, K, and Self round out the multi-round winning elite. Calipari drops harshly from first to sixth because of his pre-Rose Memphis seasons. I calculated these by awarding a point for every tourney win and a negative point for every non-tourney appearance and averaging that crap. Technical stuff. The sad thing for this decade span is the Pitino-era in Louisville. He averages simply getting to the second round in any given year. Not very good. And I killed off Brad Stevens for this ranking since he's only coached the last four years. Sean Miller's the only other asterisk guy because he started at Xavier in '05.
Regardless ... I just wanted to add another bullet into your Coach Cal argument pistol moving forward. The championship ring is coming. It has to be. Please.
... and Free Enes.
Showing posts with label Rick Pitino. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Rick Pitino. Show all posts
Wednesday, May 4, 2011
Consistent Tournament Success
Wednesday, April 14, 2010
Mass Leviticus
Starting at the ending ... you are NOT allowed to feel any negative emotion whether anger or disappointment or anything else about our five underclassmen leaving. John Wall. Demarcus Cousins. Patrick Patterson. Eric Bledsoe. Daniel Orton. All gone.
Daniel is gone after a year with dominating averages of 3.4 points, 3.3 rebounds, and 1.4 blocks in ... 13.2 minutes. But guess what? He's gonna be a top 15 draft pick, maybe even to his home team of the Oklahoma City Thunder to play on the most talented up-and-coming squad in the league. I'm willing to put money on the fact that Daniel will shatter his college freshman averages easily with his NBA rookie averages. He's as nice a kid as you'll ever meet, his basketball I.Q. is off the charts, and he's already in California training to perfect his conditioning for his already NBA-size body. Sure, he would have killed next season in the NCAA as our primary offensive weapon while already being a defensive juggernaut, but there are no guarantees in the sporting world when it comes to health, money, or location an entire year down the road. With how much the scouts loved Orton and the kinds of strides he made late in the season with the little playing time he received, he had to go to the draft. He's now a millionaire and an immediate contributor for an NBA team, eclipsing all of his freshman shortcomings. Root for him. Or else you're a jerk. He was still gonna frickin' come to our school when Billy G was our frickin' coach!!!
And Eric's a completely different story. Eric needed to go for his and our mental health this upcoming season. Don't underestimate the power of tight-knit friendship with a teenager who was uprooted from his home state and planted in the most publicly scrutinized athletic program in America. All the talk last preseason, if you remember that far back, was about "The Three Amigos". John, Boogie, and Eric hit it off immediately on campus after getting to know each other through different high school all-star games and all uniting under the new UK Calipari regime. E is a pretty quiet and introverted guy, and while he may be able to connect with some other teammates closer and kill it on the court as a sophomore next year, I'm just saying that he probably wouldn't enjoy himself as much and that could create an issue with his psyche. Who knows if he would mesh as well in the backcourt with Brandon Knight as he did with John? I have a feeling that his NBA stock would probably be higher after this year as a top 20-pick (and the 2nd point guard prospect) than it would be if he'd stayed additional seasons. So it's pretty much a no-brainer that he should follow the two other amigos. Don't look down on the kid for that.
The 2009-2010 season left so many incomparable memories for all the UK fans in the world, especially the younger ones like me. I was only 8 when we got our second title in three years with Coach Pitino and Tubby. So, sure, I had the autographed Scott Padgett poster in my room, but I wasn't fully enthralled on the day to day happenings of the program like I am today. Now I'm blessed enough to live in the same dorm as these instantly legendary UK guys who are about to blow up the NBA. I'll never forget Eric seemingly incapable of missing a jump shot against Indiana, Florida, and East Tennessee. I'll never forget Demarcus becoming a completely different basketball entity altogether after nearly single-handedly losing the Cancun Challenge for us, all culminating in that beautiful 0.1 tip-in to send the SEC Championship game into overtime. I'll never forget the worries of if Pat would be able to fit into Coach's new offense, only to witness him knock down 24 threes this season and still finish 57.5% from the floor altogether to improve his draft stock. I'll never forget John's debut game-winning jumper or his NC/UCONN dominance or his regular behind-the-back lay-up drives or his undying will to win at all costs. I'll never forget Daniel's step back three pointer to end the Blue-White scrimmage or his 3-block possession against Florida or his hilarious goaltending.
Yeah, we lost to West Virginia in the Elite 8. Yeah, we got three guys graduating, five guys leaving early, and few other huge question marks. But you know what? This was the greatest season I've ever been a part of on a daily basis and I'm perfectly fine accepting it exactly how it happened. Year One of the John Calipari era is over and it's better than I ever could've expected. Our record was 35-3, we broke 2000 wins all-time, and we won the SEC regular season and tournament titles. I don't know about you, but I can appreciate that after two years of Billy G failure while also knowing we're sending five guys into the NBA (including the #1 overall pick) and set to easily reload and compete at an elite level every single year for the foreseeable future. So if you're complaining ... shut up.
... and do the John Wall.
Saturday, August 22, 2009
You Don't Know What You're Talking About
Alright, now I'm pissed. This story has been so slanted and misreported that my neurons are in a tizzy. Now I just gotta flex poetic on the subject for a minute and get all this crap off my chest, because I gotta let you know that I've probably followed the story closer than you have. And as long as Pat Forde is spewing bull ish on the world wide leader of sports about every subject he can have an ill-conceived opinion over (besides Rick Pitino, of course), you've been misinformed.
John Calipari did literally nothing wrong in his dealings with Derrick Rose, nor anything different than any other coach in the country would have done with the information he was given. And you're a gun-jumping prick if you think you know otherwise.
Now let's also set the general record straight. The University of Memphis didn't even do anything wrong in their dealings with Derrick Rose. You got that? The entire burden of blame should be placed solely on the NCAA Clearinghouse and they should have reported their actions and ruling timelines in a more clear and distinctive fashion than the general accusatory press reports that were actually released. I'll now make my individual points.
1) Derrick Rose was never even proven to have cheated on his SAT exam. It only came under investigation after it was found that he strangely signed up to take the national exam in the city of Detroit after failing it in his hometown of Chicago three times as an underclassman. His reason for taking it in Detroit was that he was already planning on going to the Palace of Auburn Hill to see his hometown Bulls play against the Pistons in 2007 and he was running out of opportunities to take the SAT before college deadlines. Even then, there was only a single handwriting guru who questioned the legitimacy of his test, not a panel who explicitly invalidated it. Rose, though already in the NBA and free of any personal consequences were he to admit anything either way, maintains that he himself took the test and here's his official legal quote: "It is satisfying to see that the NCAA could find no wrongdoing on my part in their ruling. It is important for people to understand that I complied of everything that was asked of me while at the university, including my full cooperation in the university's investigation of this issue, and was ultimately cleared to play in the entire 2007-08 season by the NCAA Clearinghouse and the university. I look forward to putting this behind me." So let's get this clear in everyone's mind ... there is no actual proof that Derrick Rose had another person take his SAT for him.
2) Derrick Rose was cleared by the NCAA Clearinghouse who looks into and validates all incoming college athletes as being eligible to play. What John Calipari and the University of Memphis athletic department knew from the NCAA going into the actual season was that there was a pending investigation to take place looking into Rose's SAT matter. But since Rose maintained that he was innocent and that nothing would be found of his guilt if an investigation was even to occur, Calipari decided to play him. So what happened was that Rose played the entire season and the NCAA never mentioned another word about the situation. The Memphis Tigers played out the season up until April 7, 2008, when they lost to the Kansas Jayhawks in the NCAA Championship game. The Tigers couldn't make free throws, fans were pissed, and Calipari was disappointed that he let another chance at a title slip away. It was only then that something funny happened. Rose's final attempt at the SAT exam, and his only passing grade, was canceled by the NCAA's Educational Testing Service. In May of 2008. After the entire season was over. The University of Memphis then got an official notice that Derrick Rose, the point guard who had already waived the remaining three years of his college eligibility to enter the next month's NBA draft, was now ruled academically ineligible. Does anybody see the slight issue of culpability there?
3) Derrick Rose was ranked by Rivals as the third best prospect in all of high school basketball and Scout as the fifth best. Both had him as the consensus top point guard. Something that was also consensus was that Rose didn't care about earning his college degree. He was labeled as a one-and-done player from the get-go who would have gone straight to the NBA if he was allowed to. Yet he was forced to either play one season of college basketball or, as then unprecedented, go overseas into a professional league. Rose, like fellow incoming freshmen Michael Beasley, O.J. Mayo, Kevin Love, Eric Gordon, Jarryd Bayless, Donte Greene, and Bill Walker, decided to sweat it out one season in the collegiate ranks and see how far they could spark their respective rental ball clubs in the 2007-2008 season. Now boggle your brain for a second and ponder if your respective team's coach could land a top five recruit with whom he knew the clock was ticking on his stay there, yet would have the audacity to not play him over a non-solid investigation sitting on the NCAA's desk that they may or may not even look into and rule on before your player has his name called as the number one overall draft pick in the pros. Do you think your coach would choose to not play maybe the most talented player in all of college basketball after the NCAA Clearinghouse has officially declared him eligible and continually allows him to suit up and play every single game of the entire season? Do you? Seriously, answer that.
4) The charges from here on out became a legal wording formality that the NCAA selectively chooses to enforce. Though Rose was never proven to have actually cheated on his SAT, the mere fact that it was canceled (even a year later) meant that Rose was retroactively ineligible to play. And by NCAA rule, no matter when it's processed, the games that a player who is found ineligible plays in have to be stricken from the record books. As Rose stood by his innocence in the matter, the University of Memphis could have acted in no other foreseeable way. They treated him as the legitimate student athlete that he was ruled as for his entire one year tenure. But this is where the bothersome hypocrisy comes into place. The NCAA has ongoing investigations on other student athletes from prominent colleges that they've either not enforced the same rules or inexplicably left open with no imminent consequences. Corey Maggette from the hallowed Duke University has admitted that he took large cash payments from a former AAU coach and crack dealer during his one and only year in college in which he played in the national title game. Even the man who gave him money admitted so under oath. Yet Duke's 1999 Runner-Up banner still waves with no sign of ever coming down, even though accepting cash in that fashion explicitly rules that player as ineligible to play in college athletics whatsoever. Then there's the case of former Kansas Jayhawk Darrell Arthur who was recently confirmed to have had his grades changed on the eve of two high school state championship games to prevent his record from showing that he was failing out. He was never even academically eligible to graduate from South Oak Cliff High School if it weren't for the instantaneous, adamant rewritings of his transcript. Yet he still played two entire seasons in college, including the championship game opposite Derrick Rose, and Kansas is in no danger of ever suffering any ramifications from it. Shouldn't he be retroactively ineligible since he had a falsified high school diploma which would have prevented him from entering any university in the summer that he did? I'm not here to tell you if the rules are right or if they're wrong, but I am here to share with you that the NCAA pretends that these kinds of issues are black and white when, in fact, they favor certain situations, programs, or players over others of the same.
I'll prolly do another whole post about Calipari's history that's been labeled as "shady" and how he supposedly jumps to bigger and better jobs as soon as things get rough or an allegation comes up. All I have to say without delving into it any further at this moment is that this man spent eight and nine years respectively at his only other college head coaching gigs. Come on now. The dude ain't Larry Brown, yet.
... but do take my word for it.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)
