Okay SoS, I'll handle your reasonable post a paragraph at a time, because otherwise I get lost
Cal has received some praise, but he's also received a stigmatized reputation as a coach who just "rolls the balls" out there and a guy who manipulates his way through the system. He doesn't get nearly the due credit for taking a new team every season and putting them together in a successful way. If you can't see that, it's possible you haven't been listening to many media members besides Jay Bilas.
He did receive some flak, for sure, early on. A lot of people felt that he was undermining the idea of college sports being about college first, and the first year unpleasantness and his very public declarations about getting to the NBA being a/the primary concern didn't help. Now, it could be that he was actually undermining the education part of college sports, or it could be that he was simply adapting to a system that was already around; he was just the first to do so on such a huge and visible level, and his success made him a massive story and a target to some. Whichever you feel, that's really on the individual. But I REALLY disagree that he doesn't get nearly the due credit; over the last three or four years I've seen article after article about how great UK has been, at how he gets such highly ranked kids to swallow their egos and play together, at how well he does getting 18 year olds to play real D... I just don't see any lack of acknowledgement about this. Agree to disagree, I suppose.
The narrative has been accentuated for years - Cal is ruining the integrity of the game with his OAD mercenaries. Now that K has reluctantly been forced to pursue these kids, the narrative has slightly changed to one where K has "adapted with the times." So while K isn't known as the OAD genius yet (I concede that point), he is still hailed as a genius who can do it in any era, with any system now. You admitted this yourself in your own description of him - using the very words "masterful job" to describe his coaching job last year (which to his credit, actually was a masterful job). Yet, and this is the main point of my contention, Cal takes new teams every season, and puts them in a viable position to win titles and we find that the media narrative is quite different, as it slants to the negative or even silence. Certainly you're aware of this.
Again, I just don't see it. I've seen SO many articles about how great a coach Cal is. I wonder if maybe you guys just focus more on the negative the way people close to a situation often do; you can have five people say something nice about you, but when one says something mean that is what sticks out. I honestly think that is what is happening here, especially on the heels of the non-stop (and earned) Cal/UK love-fest from last year.
And K isn't "reluctantly forced to pursue these kids." He has been recruiting the same level of kids for years and years and years. In this last class, two kids went pro who weren't necessarily expected to. That's it. Certain media outlets love making it more than that, but it isn't; as a smart college basketball fan, and not a casual fan, you HAVE to be able to see that. The average fan doesn't know what RSCI is, but we do, and we can clearly go back and see that K recruiting Bazz and Barnes and Burgess and Randolph and a HOST of other potential OADs. I suppose in some way he HAS adapted to the times, in his first chance TO adapt, by coaching a team that is half freshmen.
But what really upsets me in all this isn't your program's ability to win last season, but more to do with the trajectory of how your program came to the 2015 title. On that, I focus on the point almost eight years ago when your coach publically came out and ransacked the notion of the OAD system. He has been openly critical of the system in years where it did not benefit his program, including as recently as 2014 when he threw Jabari Parker under the bus following the Mercer travesty, stating that losses like that can happen when your best players are freshmen.
Sure, K has said he doesn't like the system, but Cal has ALSO said he doesn't like the OAD system, and has said on numerous occasions he wishes there was a two and done system. Just because someone doesn't like a certain aspect of college ball doesn't mean they aren't going to use it; after all, K has been recruiting multiple potential OADs for years and years, just as a number of coaches of top level programs have done. Nothing has changed except one or two more kids saying they are going to the draft. And saying that an unexpected loss to a good team can happen when you rely on a freshman isn't throwing a kid under the bus; it is just truth. You guys have experienced that as well.
I've yet to see any media member critically take on the reality of that sentiment since Duke won the national title. Most of them chose to ignore the point altogether or continue to build upon the "K adapted with the times" narrative.
Well, I think thankfully the majority of the media has come to accept that this is the way the game is going now, and are moving on to different stories. That is largely thanks to Cal paving the way, as far as how the media perceives multiple OAD players at a single school. This is not a BAD thing, except you guys had to put up with some negativity in the beginning because UK was the first to really do that. Sucks, but that time is past.
