I beg to differ and the "IF" you used tells me all I need to know
Not gonna lie. Losing Cal so abruptly and the timeliness of it sucked for me. But...
- Thread starter Jamal Sunburn
- Start date
imo this is a fair post . I didn’t get to watch bbm and don’t really know what to expect from this team ( other than shooting a lot of 3,s) because I haven’t seen one minute of any of these guys on a college basketball court. No matter how the season goes, I’m just happy to be rid of the narcissistic car salesman.
We’ve been sent home from the tournament many times from teams not very athletic so I think we’ll be fine.
❤️ We might disagree on some things brother but we’ll always have “piss off, Cal!”
Hey, that’s not right to call him a pig. He’s cow.
By losing him abruptly, are we speaking in like geologic frames of time or maybe the time frame of say planetary stuff like Uranus?
Pretty much the same thing with tubby. It took some longer than others to figure out that a change was needed
The only thing stupid is thinking that he could coach. No other coach in NCAA history has done so little with so much. It is crazy for a coach to brag about the number of his former players who went to the NBA and not have people wondering why such great talent only produced one championship. To make matters worse, he lost the ability to even win conference championships. That isn't a take; it is a fact.
I don't hate the guy, but it was getting very, very close...if he'd stayed one more year it probably would've done the trick
This post is the perfect segue into the point I wanted to make: it's going to be refreshing as hell having a coach that isn't universally despised by the officials. I'm looking forward to getting the best whistle we've seen in 15 years. You have to believe refs will find Pope as likeable as everybody else; I expect him to get his fair share of 50-50 calls.
I hear you Jamal. I supported Cal pretty much to the end, but when the end finally came for me, I was done with him. The post-season success, or lack thereof, is what did him in for me. He took a team with 2 lottery picks this past season, sat them on the bench every game, and then went to the SEC-T and didn't win a game, still got a great seed in the NCAA-T and still lost in the first round AGAIN. Cal coached like a scared kid in that game AGAIN. He was tight as a drum the last few years and his players played the same way he coached. It was time for him to go. I hate it in many ways, but it's just true.
But I'm with you. I think I had forgotten some of the reasons I loved Kentucky as a teenager and as a young man. Calipari was a great coach in many ways, back when he was first on board, but I had forgotten how it felt to have a true UK guy at the helm. Cal was never a UK guy. I don't doubt one bit that he wanted to win every game, but he didn't live and die with it like UK fans really do. His biggest day was when his players went to the NBA. He was players first, not program first, and he didn't mind telling you so. Pope was a guy who learned all of that as a player and loves UK. He loves the Commonwealth of Kentucky. He loves the University. He loves the history. He was a UK fanboy, even when he wasn't here. The way he has operated as the UK coach is exactly what we all needed, whether we knew it or not. I'm thrilled with where we are right now. I want the team to do well for more than just bragging rights or because I've always supported UK. I want them to win because I genuinely love Pope and all he's brought to UK.
Cal was great until Covid. I don't know what the hell happened to him and probably never will. He was never the same after that....
Oh, I mean the lifetime contract.
Oh, I mean the lifetime contract.
Ya I have no idea what these psychos saying 2015 are taking about WTF. 2017, 2019, and 2020 were very solid years. The wheels completely fell off after 2020. COMPLETELY. I don’t know if it’s the fact the transfer portal became what it was and college bball all of a sudden shifted to much older teams or what, but Cal lost it and I don’t see him getting it back.
I don’t know about that . It looked like more of a steady decline to me . In 2016 we lost to Indiana pretty early in the tournament. Two other years the bracket completely opened up and we lost to a Bruce Weber coached Kansas St team and an Auburn team playing without one of it’s best players. Really the only team I felt good about was the Fox, Bam ,Monk team .
We won the SEC in '20 though. '18 was super young and uninspiring even with an open bracket.
My point is maybe wheels were wobbling around Duke game in '18-'19 and one was about to fall of with Evansville but the thing wrecked during Covid and all of it fell apart for good after.
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The 2016 loss sucked. But we bounced back really well next year. There were some slight flags after Fox monk and bam. But the real decline started after that 9-15 year. Something broke within Cal and that’s when. It really went to crap.
Cal was never great. He simply had enough talent to overcome his inability to coach. When players won the ability to move around, his inability to coach became even more apparent because his OAD players were overpowered by the transfer players.
You do realize these players were 17 or 18 years old when they played at UK against 22 and 23 year old players. They did not walk into the NBA and win the NBA championship or NBA player of the year their first year. Cal by record is probably the 2nd most successful coach in UK history.
You do realize that it was Cal's decision to not bring in quality transfers, simply out of touch with modern day college basketball and extremely lazy from a bloated contract. You do realize that Kentucky's last championship was 2012 so to suggest that transfer players is the reason for Cal's poor performance is laughable. Many of Cal's players who went to the NBA instantly started playing at a higher level after receiving good coaching.
RP was much better than Cal and it isn't even close. If RP had the talent that Cal wasted, there would be several more NC banners hanging. Had it not been for an injury, RP would have hung two banners. Cal never came close to a second banner.
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I do realize he did not bring in quality transfers. My comment was stating that this talent you talk of him having and not winning with was very young. You have to agree, Jamal Mashburn was not the same player as a freshman as he was a junior. That was my point. You cannot look at a player that is two years older in the NBA and say he was the same talent as he was as a freshman in college. That is comparing apples to oranges. Transfers and if you like his coaching, etc... is a different conversation.
RP has his issues too. I heard the same comments about how he sucked as a coach too when he was at UK. How many times was he blamed for not guarding the ball out of bounds. RP has his strengths too. Cal's was recruiting and motivating. RP was developing talent and game planning. Not a great in game coach either. Remember the Rod Rhodes show? Marquette?
Who out coached RP and beat RP when RP had the team he refers to as the greatest team of all time? I am not saying this to criticize RP, because I think he is one of the best of all time.
To say Cal never came close to a second banner is insane. I think a loss in the finals is close to a second banner, 38-1 loss in the final four is close to a third banner, and a second loss in the final four is close to a 4th banner. This does not mention an overtime loss in the elite eight, a weird 1st half officiating game that came down to a last second buzzer beater in the elite eight or a third elite eight loss in his first year. He averaged an elite eight or better finish every other year during his tenure at UK. To say he sucks as a coach is comical. He took UMass to the Final Four. We are talking UMASS. What did they do before Cal or after? Memphis to the Championship game.
The guy did a lot of GREAT things for UK and the state of Kentucky (Tornado relief, Flood relief) . He even did the University a favor by leaving and leaving a tone of money on the table. It is time for everyone to move on and let the guy live his life. It is just a game.
Again, you are making up excuses for the inexcusable and that is your right to do so, but I am not buying it. It is all about decisions and when you make them, you have to accept the consequences of those decisions. Cal made a decision to focus on turning UK into an NBA farm system instead of winning championships and no amount of revisionist history will change that bad decision.
As for remembering fans complaining about RP, I can't debate you about what you remember; however, I can say I don't remember it as you do. Did some fans not always agree with some of his decisions, possibly, but those were isolated cases. Fans were too appreciative of the fact that he saved the program from the NCAA's death penalty to be upset with him. In an attempt to destroy Kentucky, the NCAA allowed players to transfer out without having to set out a year. If I am not mistaken, that was the first time the NCAA ever did that. RP still was able to coach that team to a 14-14 season and there isn't a doubt in my mind that Cal couldn't have pulled that off. RP walked away after 8 years with a 219-50 record which equates to an 81.9% winning percentage including the death penalty season. Cal's winning percentage was only 76.9%, never having a team as limited in talent as RP's first season.
Cal was hired to be a basketball coach and not the states' ambassador. His primary responsibility was to coach his kids. All the other stuff he did was to overshadow what he wasn't doing well on the court. As for leaving money on the table, Cal outsmarted himself by trying to have secret conversations with Arkansas while not anticipating that Arkansas would leak the story. I am sure that Arkansas did it because they knew Cal was in violation of his contract and they wanted to make certain that Cal wouldn't be able to use them to negotiate a contract change or a new practice facility. Cal had no real intentions to walk away, he simply over played his hand by violating his contract and was eventually shown the door.
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Simply put this could not be better stated. Not just the bolded parts but the whole statement.
I totally agree. Something changed for him during Covid. If I were to speculate... Calipari was already all about the players, which is admirable to a degree, but also has drawbacks.
So, when Covid hit, Cal went into overdrive with his "players first" mantra. He went all in on wanting players to get paid and make it to the NBA and never have any mental or emotional struggles and challenges, even at the expense of pushing players to their limit to make them better. The result of that was seen in the way he coached, which was with kid gloves from what I could see. And then when things got really tough in games or practices for players, he backed off and wouldn't push them, and the players wilted under pressure. That's just my theory.
And YET you SHIT ON POPE AND UK. Just like I didn’t mean to call you out.
Also you really need to get away from the cal thinking of recruiting and playing. Pretty sure our offense now runs sets and plays and you don’t need some stud to go one on one all the time and call it offense
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I would not Give that poster 5 minutes of your time. It is obvious he is a troll or a university of cal fan and enjoyed watching cal take the stage and spew his usual self inflating speeches he has spoken fifteen years in a roll
Which is why we all need to be behind Pope. That can’t be allowed and I know he will work tirelessly to give us the team we all want!!
He lost John Robic. He was able to keep it together somewhat until Covid and then collapsed. Tried his best but couldn’t coach a team without him.
He’s the big COW running the hog pen.
