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View Full Version : Calipari Has Lost His Marbles



burnspbesq
06-01-2016, 08:58 PM
http://espn.go.com/mens-college-basketball/story/_/id/15885267/kentucky-wildcats-coach-john-calipari-suggests-moving-sec-tournament-november

gocanes0506
06-01-2016, 09:18 PM
I thought so too at first but that is from a true basketball conference perspective.

The ACC tournament has a lot riding on it. It was a better draw with the first 9 but it's still special.

The SEC tournament is almost worse then some mid major conference tournaments. They treat it is a major conference tournament but it's really just Kentucky's show. A&M, Vandy, and Florida are randomly going to challenge them. I can see his point when much isn't riding on the tournament. I still think it's stupid because I'm a basketball traditionalist but in the SEC realm the suggestion isn't completely ridiculous.

weezie
06-01-2016, 09:22 PM
The Dope Store, not to be confused with the late and dearly lamented Dope Shop, is fresh out of Cal.

Haha, still bent out of shape about blowing it in 2015. Waaaaaaah.....

Wander
06-01-2016, 09:35 PM
Calipari's motivation here is garbage and whiny, but I don't hate the idea itself. Conference tournaments are a bit of a relic of the one-bid era. It's fun to watch the finals of the small conference tournaments, but they probably hurt those conferences in the end by cutting out some of their best teams like Steph Curry's last Davidson team. That's not a danger for the power conferences, but I don't even find the ACC tournament all that fun anymore with the double-bye system. Who wants to watch the 13th and 14th best teams in a 15 team conference play each other in March? Yawn.

Whether you like Calipari's proposal or not, the conference tournament system is in need of reform.

BigWayne
06-01-2016, 09:39 PM
An SEC hoops tourney before Christmas will be worth even less money to the networks than it is in March. It will be on par with the old Sugar Bowl basketball games that went along with the football game. Outside of Kentucky fans, nobody in SEC land is paying any attention to basketball until January.

Atlanta Duke
06-01-2016, 09:52 PM
Another effort by Cal to get quoted and stay in the media mix

K gets to talk about plans for Rio and Cal throws out a proposal to change the SEC tournament date in the indefinite future - not a great comparison if any recruits are considering which coach will be more involved in significant events this summer

FerryFor50
06-01-2016, 09:58 PM
Another effort by Cal to get quoted and stay in the media mix

K gets to talk about plans for Rio and Cal throws out a proposal to change the SEC tournament date in the indefinite future - not a great comparison if any recruits are considering which coach will be more involved in significant events this summer

Maybe he should focus on explaining how he managed to end up with Marcus Lee and Isaiah Briscoe back in school after declaring for the draft and how he didn't get them ready for the NBA.

PalmettoExpat
06-01-2016, 10:00 PM
A little funny he's complaining about a 4-seed vs. A&M's 3-seed as well. UK couldn't even get out of the first weekend at the 4 seed...so...if anything you could argue they were overseeded.

FerryFor50
06-01-2016, 10:03 PM
A little funny he's complaining about a 4-seed vs. A&M's 3-seed as well. UK couldn't even get out of the first weekend at the 4 seed...so...if anything you could argue they were overseeded.

He also renders his own argument moot. It was UK's regular season that stuck them with the 4 seed, not the SEC conference tourny. They might have had a 5-6 seed if they didn't have the SEC tourny.

gurufrisbee
06-01-2016, 10:11 PM
There is some merit to the idea that the regular season champion is more deserving of the automatic bid than the conference tournament winner.

However it's clear that Calipari is just being a whiner here.

It doesn't matter whether the SEC tournament is in November or March - either way it's still the biggest mediocre mid major conference out there.

77devil
06-01-2016, 10:26 PM
There is some merit to the idea that the regular season champion is more deserving of the automatic bid than the conference tournament.

Nonsense. Without the balanced schedule, the regular season "winner" is no champion.

gurufrisbee
06-01-2016, 10:32 PM
So 18 games where you actually play every team at least once is less indicative of which is the best team in the conference than just 3 or 4 games in one weekend? Suuuuuuure.

throatybeard
06-02-2016, 12:51 AM
There is some merit to the idea that the regular season champion is more deserving of the automatic bid than the conference tournament winner.

However it's clear that Calipari is just being a whiner here.

It doesn't matter whether the SEC tournament is in November or March - either way it's still the biggest mediocre mid major conference out there.

It was pretty exciting that year a tornado hit the Georgia Dome during it.

Olympic Fan
06-02-2016, 01:07 AM
Calipari's motivation here is garbage and whiny, but I don't hate the idea itself. Conference tournaments are a bit of a relic of the one-bid era. .

Actually, it's exactly opposite.

During the one-bid era (1951-1974, when major conferences got one automatic bids) only the ACC and the Southern Conferences used a conference tournament to determine their champions.

Nationally, the conference championship tournament is a product of the multi-bid NCAA era. Once the NCAA expabnded its field, the Big Ten, SEC, Pac 12, Big East -- everybody! -- began holding a conference tournament. But not in the one-bid era.

As for the argument about conference tournament vs. regular season, I don't see why anybody pays attention to the NBA playoffs.

After all, an 82-game schedule where everybody plays everybody has to be a much fairer way to determine a champion that a best-of-seven playoff series. Shouldn't we crown the Oakland Warriors as champions for their 73 regular season wins and not force them to play a meaningless championship series with the Cavaliers?

Same for the World Series and the Super Bowl and the Stanley Cup. Postseason tournaments have no place in sports ... regular season schedules are much fairer ways to determine champion.

At least that's the argument critics of the conference tournament seem to be making.

subzero02
06-02-2016, 01:46 AM
I thought so too at first but that is from a true basketball conference perspective.

The ACC tournament has a lot riding on it. It was a better draw with the first 9 but it's still special.

The SEC tournament is almost worse then some mid major conference tournaments. They treat it is a major conference tournament but it's really just Kentucky's show. A&M, Vandy, and Florida are randomly going to challenge them. I can see his point when much isn't riding on the tournament. I still think it's stupid because I'm a basketball traditionalist but in the SEC realm the suggestion isn't completely ridiculous.

While not consistently an elite program, list the ACC schools that have have had more NCAA tournament success over the last 25 years than Florida. By my count, the key resume points are 5 final fours... 1994,2000,2006,2007 and 2014 and 2 national titles, 2006 and 2007. Amongst ACC schools, that leaves all but Duke and the dump on the hill in the dust. Regardless of what you think, there's no way Florida deserves to be grouped with the aggies and commodores.

Indoor66
06-02-2016, 06:00 AM
Where is Cal going to find the schedule room for an season opening tournament of 4 or 5 games?

MarkD83
06-02-2016, 06:42 AM
Where is Cal going to find the schedule room for an season opening tournament of 4 or 5 games?

Well..if he keeps getting out recruited by Coach K he can find four games that UK won't play on the last 2 weekends of the NCAA tournament. :)

duke blue brewcrew
06-02-2016, 07:34 AM
An SEC hoops tourney before Christmas will be worth even less money to the networks than it is in March. It will be on par with the old Sugar Bowl basketball games that went along with the football game. Outside of Kentucky fans, nobody in SEC land is paying any attention to basketball until January.

IMHO An SEC Hoops tourney is pretty worthless regardless. Not a lot of mystery as to what's going to happen from year to year with that one. 70% of the crowd will be UK fans regardless of when and where it's held.

luburch
06-02-2016, 07:39 AM
I'm still holding out hope for a college basketball Champions League.

moonpie23
06-02-2016, 08:47 AM
he DOES have a point....... (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UchewNIi_zA)

flyingdutchdevil
06-02-2016, 08:50 AM
I'm still holding out hope for a college basketball Champions League.

Isn't that called the NCAA Tournament? Best teams from all the leagues compete for 1 title?

luburch
06-02-2016, 09:08 AM
Isn't that called the NCAA Tournament? Best teams from all the leagues compete for 1 title?

Not quite. Here's a slightly older SI article with one proposal for it. http://www.si.com/college-basketball/one-and-one/2013/05/08/college-basketball-schedule

There are some things I would change from that article, but it hits the general idea.

rsvman
06-02-2016, 09:18 AM
Calipari's motivation here is garbage and whiny, but I don't hate the idea itself. Conference tournaments are a bit of a relic of the one-bid era. It's fun to watch the finals of the small conference tournaments, but they probably hurt those conferences in the end by cutting out some of their best teams like Steph Curry's last Davidson team. That's not a danger for the power conferences, but I don't even find the ACC tournament all that fun anymore with the double-bye system. Who wants to watch the 13th and 14th best teams in a 15 team conference play each other in March? Yawn.

Whether you like Calipari's proposal or not, the conference tournament system is in need of reform.

How about only letting the top 8 teams (or maybe even 6 or 4; conferences could decide) from the regular season compete in the conference tournament? That would give the regular season "meaning" in that, if you tanked the regular season, you couldn't even play in the conference tournament. It would also eliminate meaningless Boston College games, and the like.

Scorp4me
06-02-2016, 09:18 AM
So 18 games where you actually play every team at least once is less indicative of which is the best team in the conference than just 3 or 4 games in one weekend? Suuuuuuure.

Large conference, unbalanced schedule...yeap less indicative.

snowdenscold
06-02-2016, 09:46 AM
Actually, it's exactly opposite.

During the one-bid era (1951-1974, when major conferences got one automatic bids) only the ACC and the Southern Conferences used a conference tournament to determine their champions.

Nationally, the conference championship tournament is a product of the multi-bid NCAA era. Once the NCAA expabnded its field, the Big Ten, SEC, Pac 12, Big East -- everybody! -- began holding a conference tournament. But not in the one-bid era.

As for the argument about conference tournament vs. regular season, I don't see why anybody pays attention to the NBA playoffs.

After all, an 82-game schedule where everybody plays everybody has to be a much fairer way to determine a champion that a best-of-seven playoff series. Shouldn't we crown the Oakland Warriors as champions for their 73 regular season wins and not force them to play a meaningless championship series with the Cavaliers?

Same for the World Series and the Super Bowl and the Stanley Cup. Postseason tournaments have no place in sports ... regular season schedules are much fairer ways to determine champion.

At least that's the argument critics of the conference tournament seem to be making.

Two points (and I feel like this topic comes up pretty regularly, so I'm sure I remember seeing this all hashed out before):

- Conference tournaments are unique/distinct from those other examples in that they're only quasi post-season. I believe the fact that many teams will go on to play a different and more significant NCAA tournament right after (and regardless of the result) changes the feel of the conference tournament. It's not potentially season ending for the better teams.
You remember much better your results and finish in the NCAA tournaments year to year and it becomes much harder to remember the ACC tourney results (unless you win, but even then I can't name all our ACCT winning seasons at this point like I can all of our NCAA finishes).
So it's not that "Postseason tournaments have no place in sports," but rather that the conference tournaments are an odd duck in regards to the word "postseason".

- MLB, NBA and NHL all have "best of" series per round*, with the latter two all best-of-7. That's a very different structure than the single-elimination format of college BB. Unfortunately it would be too impractical to try to make each NCAA round a best-of-3 series or something.


All this to say, I have become much more appreciative of regular-season ACC results over the years. I used to be in the "Conference Tournament champion is the only real champion" camp, but I think a lot of that was because we were winning the ACCT so frequently 10-15 year ago, and because UNC valued regular season more than we did, so of course we couldn't have that. So even with the unbalanced schedule, I now hold just as much respect for the 18-game regular season winner as I do the outcome of a single-elimination tournament over a couple days.



* Let's pretend the MLB 1-game play-in they have now never existed...

ChillinDuke
06-02-2016, 11:59 AM
It's a tough topic because there are a lot of viewpoints to consider. One is large conference versus small. Another is major/mid-major versus low-major. Another is the definition of "best team." I could go on and on.

The whole thing is tricky. Every coin has two sides. Say you want to disallow any team ranked 9th or below in their conference from playing in their respective conference tourney, and those schools will likely recoil about not having at least an ability to be an underdog hero for a couple weeks in March/April, having the school name paraded on every channel from ESPN to CBS to TruTV. Tell them it's because they didn't perform well enough in the regular season and they'll respond with unbalanced schedules. Etc, etc, etc. Your examples may vary from mine, but you get the point.

I think we can all agree that there are different ways to look at it. And there's always room for improvement. Always.

Just remember, the current product is pretty darn good. *

- Chillin

* As I typed this I laughed, because the two sides to every coin saying still holds. Because many would argue that the college basketball product is actually kinda stinky, insomuch as it relates to NBA basketball. I was trying to say that college ball, in and of itself, has a pretty good format - with multiple formats within the entirety of a season (in-season tourneys, challenges, regular season, conference tourney, nationwide tourney). It's an excellent model and a great way to determine what I would deem the "best team" (again YMMV on the term). I wish other leagues had similar diversity of format within a single season. For example, golf has individual tournaments, majors, FedEx Cup (or whatever the name is now), Rider Cup, etc.

[/Stream of Consciousness]

Neals384
06-02-2016, 12:52 PM
he DOES have a point... (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UchewNIi_zA)

Click if you like unicorns.

Olympic Fan
06-02-2016, 01:12 PM
Two points (and I feel like this topic comes up pretty regularly, so I'm sure I remember seeing this all hashed out before):

- Conference tournaments are unique/distinct from those other examples in that they're only quasi post-season. I believe the fact that many teams will go on to play a different and more significant NCAA tournament right after (and regardless of the result) changes the feel of the conference tournament. It's not potentially season ending for the better teams.
You remember much better your results and finish in the NCAA tournaments year to year and it becomes much harder to remember the ACC tourney results (unless you win, but even then I can't name all our ACCT winning seasons at this point like I can all of our NCAA finishes).
So it's not that "Postseason tournaments have no place in sports," but rather that the conference tournaments are an odd duck in regards to the word "postseason".

- MLB, NBA and NHL all have "best of" series per round*, with the latter two all best-of-7. That's a very different structure than the single-elimination format of college BB. Unfortunately it would be too impractical to try to make each NCAA round a best-of-3 series or something.


All this to say, I have become much more appreciative of regular-season ACC results over the years. I used to be in the "Conference Tournament champion is the only real champion" camp, but I think a lot of that was because we were winning the ACCT so frequently 10-15 year ago, and because UNC valued regular season more than we did, so of course we couldn't have that. So even with the unbalanced schedule, I now hold just as much respect for the 18-game regular season winner as I do the outcome of a single-elimination tournament over a couple days.



* Let's pretend the MLB 1-game play-in they have now never existed...

I don't understand the dismissal of a conference championship as somehow not important enough to treat like all major sports treat their championships -- via tournaments.

The ACC -- and before that, the same teams in the Southern Conference -- have ALWAYS played a single-elimination postseason tournament to determine its champion. The Southern/ACC tournament is 17 years older than the NCAA Tournament. THEY copied US.

But basketball has always been a tournament game ... at EVERY level.

I still argue that the unbalanced regular season schedule is unfair -- just three years ago, Duke finished one game behind Miami for the "regular season championship". But the two teams played 14 common opponents (meaning at the same locations -- playing Clemson at Clemson is different from playing Clemson at home). Duke was 12-2 and Miami was 11-3 in hose common games. But Miami was 4-0 in the "other" games, while Duke was 2-2. So the unbalanced schedule did determine the champion. And in 2005, Wake finished a game behind UNC in the regular season, but only got to play UNC once that year (winning the one matchup i9n Chapel Hill). Had the two teams met again in Winston-Salem, we could have easily had co-champs. So in a sense, the 2005 regular season title was determined by the schedule too.

We can argue back and fourth all day, but the FACT is that the ACC champion is determined by the tournament. It always has been and, hopefully, is always will.

PS The ACC Tournament doesn't seem to have hurt the ACC very much -- considering that that ACC -- long the only league with a tournament (other than the Southern, which became small potatoes after the ACC teams left) -- has by far and away the best NCAA Tournament winning percentage of any major conference.

English
06-02-2016, 01:56 PM
My educated guess is that Calipari's proposal stems from a spectacular overreaction to his team beating TAMU in the SEC conference championship on Sunday, and immediately being seeded below them in Sunday's NCAAT Selection Show (while both split reg season co-champs). Cal went public with his theory (rightly or wrongly) that the Selection Committee didn't pay any attention to the outcome of that day's two conference championship games (B1G being the other), and so both were meaningless. I suppose moving the SEC conference tourney up five months would give the Committee more time to consider the outcome. (?)

Now, my EDUCATED guess is that Cal demands attention, so this is his way of stealing some for himself in a time that centers around the NBA playoffs and CBB recruiting. I guess it's slightly better than his constant droning about all the talent he's sent to the League and how you could create a competitive NBA team with his former players. It's not that the claims have no merit, it's just that...enough already, bro. He's the only guy that consistently self-promotes to the ends of the basketball earth. At least this proposal, if you can call it that, gives us some fodder for the offseason boards.

NashvilleDevil
06-08-2016, 06:47 PM
His seeking of the spotlight will never end. Here's his take on who the Sixers should take at 1. (http://espn.go.com/nba/draft2016/story/_/id/16052499/kentucky-head-coach-john-calipari-says-philadelphia-76ers-take-wildcats-guard-jamal-murray-no1-pick-nba-draft) I never hear K politic this hard for one of his players to go first.

Atlanta Duke
06-08-2016, 09:05 PM
His seeking of the spotlight will never end. Here's his take on who the Sixers should take at 1. (http://espn.go.com/nba/draft2016/story/_/id/16052499/kentucky-head-coach-john-calipari-says-philadelphia-76ers-take-wildcats-guard-jamal-murray-no1-pick-nba-draft) I never hear K politic this hard for one of his players to go first.

Just another incident of offseason trolling to get quoted while claiming it is all about helping his players (which of course sometimes includes kicking them out of their old Kentucky home)

Kedsy
06-08-2016, 09:31 PM
For those thinking Calipari is just attempting to get column inches, here's Exhibit B (http://espn.go.com/nba/draft2016/story/_/id/16052499/kentucky-head-coach-john-calipari-says-philadelphia-76ers-take-wildcats-guard-jamal-murray-no1-pick-nba-draft).

Coach Cal says the 76ers should take Jamal Murray with the #1 pick because he's coached four #1 picks before:



"If you're going to take the No. 1 pick, you probably should do it from our program,'' Calipari said.


Pretty funny, right?

Bluegrassdevil1
06-08-2016, 10:05 PM
Calipari can claim Wall, Davis, Towns, Rose (as an "outsider"), Booker, Cousins, and Bledsoe.

The man knows how to draw eyeballs, and his statement is not without evidence.

Coach K (with Capel in recent years) has accomplished a great many things, but the greatest act in the later "half" of his career may just be convincing high school stars to add the letters "D" and "E" to their college choice.