The Cheaters suffered another blowout loss to an unranked and ordinary Wake Forest team. It's starting to look like they may well miss the NCAA tournament. It's also looking like a steep decline for a program that has struggled for three years now. Hubert Davis looks overmatched as the head coach. And I don't see them being able to get rid of their first African American head coach, an honored former player with strong ties inside the Community of Cheater Hoops until at least year three.
It is hard to say how long they may struggle -- a couple more years? Through the next coaching transition? A decades-long Indiana type decline? No one thought that was possible for Indiana either in the early 1990s.
Some perspective: 12 years ago the Cheaters were all convinced they were going to supplant Kentucky - not just for all-time wins which they had held for years until the late 1990s -- but overall. After all, they'd actually won some championships, had the hottest coach in the sport, were in a celebrated conference with ESPN fawning over them as much as Duke back then, and were still living off Michael Jordan's legacy to a degree.
To me, this strongly suggests
1. You need to be very careful about coaching changes.
2. The ebb and flow of the sport plays out over years. UNC-Cheats was a much stronger contender to Kentucky's throne as the Greatest Program of All Time in 2009-10 than Duke heading into the Post-K era or certainly the Jailhawks, with their meager championship accomplishments, dirty, cheating reputation and second-rate conference affiliation.
Kentucky will be fine at the top, especially if Calipari has another half dozen good years and the transition to the next coach is handled right.
The Cheaters suffered another blowout loss to an unranked and ordinary Wake Forest team. It's starting to look like they may well miss the NCAA tournament. It's also looking like a steep decline for a program that has struggled for three years now. Hubert Davis looks overmatched as the head coach. And I don't see them being able to get rid of their first African American head coach, an honored former player with strong ties inside the Community of Cheater Hoops until at least year three.
It is hard to say how long they may struggle -- a couple more years? Through the next coaching transition? A decades-long Indiana type decline? No one thought that was possible for Indiana either in the early 1990s.
Some perspective: 12 years ago the Cheaters were all convinced they were going to supplant Kentucky - not just for all-time wins which they had held for years until the late 1990s -- but overall. After all, they'd actually won some championships, had the hottest coach in the sport, were in a celebrated conference with ESPN fawning over them as much as Duke back then, and were still living off Michael Jordan's legacy to a degree.
To me, this strongly suggests
1. You need to be very careful about coaching changes.
2. The ebb and flow of the sport plays out over years. UNC-Cheats was a much stronger contender to Kentucky's throne as the Greatest Program of All Time in 2009-10 than Duke heading into the Post-K era or certainly the Jailhawks, with their meager championship accomplishments, dirty, cheating reputation and second-rate conference affiliation.
Kentucky will be fine at the top, especially if Calipari has another half dozen good years and the transition to the next coach is handled right.
They and the NCAA dug this hole on October 13, 2017. Two of their last 3 championships should have stripped because of the fraud and they should of been ineligible due to fraud to play in the last one they won. They have no choice but to keep Hubert until they get someone that has been part of the fraud to take over.
