I think the terms being used mean different things to different people. The goal at a place like UK should be to compete for a championship, and win your share of them. There is no reason to have a prolonged FF drought, which we are approaching. Also, expectations and what that means differ. General expectations should be over a set time period, not too short and not too long. 2-3 FF in a decade is about right, probably with no more than 5 years between appearances. A championship every decade is probably about right for an expectation. However, expecting a FF or Championship every year is just not attainable. The tournament is a crap shoot so to speak, but if the stars never align, you should probably move from where you are standing.
Cal has delivered as the coach at UK, at least up to this point. If the drought continues, then it is time for him to either change what he is doing, or we need a new coach. When I see the views on Cal, I think 2 things, some fans are putting too much blame on Cal, and some fans are giving too much credit to Cal. Some are blaming Cal for virtually every loss, while some are blaming every thing but him for the losses. The truth is Cal is responsible for a few (nobody is perfect), and other things are responsible for a few. Cal is one of the best out there, but he certainly isn't God.
The other issue is the players, they aren't robots. If you think of it as each player receives a performance rating for each game, the player has a range between his potential and his worst game that it will always fall in. But realize there is a range. The ceiling of that range for individual players rarely if ever changes. What good coaches do is raise the floor, decreasing the range of performance the player can have. Generally with experience, the floor keeps raising, and it is why so many want experienced players. The problem is those experienced players have lower ceilings than the younger players. In a game with a team like Cal generally has, it doesn't really matter as much where is their range the other teams players perform, it is more about where in the range UK's players performance falls. And it is more likely than not that more players will perform closer to their floor than at their ceiling. The evidence of Cal raising our players floor is his average finish is between an elite eight and a final four. Cal's UK teams have made the final four more often than they have fallen short of the elite eight. A lot of people's suggestions for how Cal should have coached previous teams probably would have led to more games close to their ceiling, but their floor would have never been raised, and it would have been likely that the team would have exited the tournament much earlier most of the time.
