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Originally posted by John Stuart MillRIP: Charlie Munger​Originally posted by Robert “Hoot†Gibson -
Nah, it's different. Tubby was recruiting guys like Morakinyo Williams. Cal has three or four top ten players coming in (if they indeed come in).
Way different circumstance...but I do agree that I notice some similar burn-out just in their dispositions. However if you've got the players in sports it makes getting past that burn-out way easier. Tubby in his last two years had teams that were put together with twine and duct tape. This team next season is (on paper) going to be radically different.Comment
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I get what you’re saying, but I’m with Spirit on this one. Much like this season, it’s probably safest to bet recent patterns will continue.
The team showed no ability to win five, let alone six, games in a row, so there was no real reason to think that would change in the tournament. Likewise, Calipari has shown no ability (or willingness) to make necessary changes to his philosophy, so why should we fool ourselves into thinking next year will be any different?
Let’s just get through the season and hope he’s big enough to walk away after he’s coached his OAD’s son.Comment
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Because they weren't talented enough to do it. Plus, the locker room fracturing or whatever.
That's not letting Cal off the hook but when you bore down into what's going on here, it starts in recruiting. He let go of the rope on the recruiting trail, either because other programs caught up or he just didn't have the energy he once had (I suspect a little of both).
Next year, different story. I'm not saying I expect a contender or anything; I have no expectations at all. I'm just saying that we saw nothing like what we're going to see next year at the tail end of Tubby's tenure (assuming they come). Tubby just left. Cal found a way to cobble together a team (again, on paper) reminiscent of what he was doing early on.Comment
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Yes and no. They were talented enough to win a five or six game stretch at some point this season. That they never pulled it off speaks as much or more to Cal than to the players.
Beside the point, though. I have next to no remaining faith in Cal’s ability to get out of his own way.Comment
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It definitely *sounds* really, really dumb to say, "Wait til next year and Cal'll have his boys in here and we're gonna be good again!" Given what we've seen here recently the idea that Kentucky could be some well-oiled machine is so ludicrous that nobody, not even the most trenchant Cal supporter, would believe it.
However going back to Tubby, I always thought with Tubby, even at the very end, that if he could get a couple of big recruits things would be different. Tyler Hansbrough was a big one, Kevin Durant another, North Carolina's Brandan Wright a third. I truly believed that if he could land a player like that then things might turn.Comment
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Having some help for Morris definitely would have helped, and I think Brandon Rush / somebody like that could have been huge. Things were about to become disastrously ugly but the 2006 team still did have some talent left over.
I see some similarities between the two in how they lost some of the control of the teams. The Rondo / Sparks stuff, Morris and his fax, starting the wrong Perry in an NCAA game.
What is extremely frustrating is how Calipari seems to have lost his formers strengths so quickly. I can’t think of anyone else that fell so rapidly. He’s older…but he isn’t ancient. He doesn’t have anything crazy going on off of the field to our knowledge. I’m sure the stuff with Robic was hard on Calipari too. Is he depressed? Did he simply lose his love of the game? I’m not sure, but he’s just not the same guy anymore…and I am of the opinion that he can’t regain that energy again.Comment
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I think most of this simply comes back to talent.
We all know this team had other stuff going on. But even if they didn't, is that team contending for a title? Definitely not.
When you're losing like we have been that sucks the life out of these coaches. I think that's the simple reason why Cal looks bedraggled and spent. Look at how many fans have said they're depressed because of it. But the losing has a reason, a root cause, and it's that the entire methodology ("I'M HERE BECAUSE I CAN RECRUIT THE BEST OF THE BEST") changed. And thus the program as a whole changed.Comment
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We went from Point Guard U to Point Guard Who?
That might be the single biggest shot to Cal’s trajectory here, in hindsight. If we kept getting elite pg play we probably would have been fine and had another FF by now.Comment
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The Trae Young into Cade Cunningham duo of terror was a major blow.
Then James Wiseman in through Zion to Jalen Duren culminating in the Shaedon Sharpe cluster fully broke the back.
It's not for lack of trying. He's targeted the same kinds of players he was in 2005 at Memphis. The plan is still in place. It's that the plan just had a fray in it, and Cal never was able to figure out how to patch it. He finally did with this next group, but of course the next group has a player with tight connection to Calipari in it. Much easier.
There's an entire think piece about this a person could write, and there are several reasons for it (some we know, some behind the scenes) that range from the assistant coaches to the failed Joel Justus thing to possibly World Wide Wes leaving to Cal simply getting older to every program in America normalizing one-and-dones. And so on.
But I think a major reason for the failures was that Kentucky became a one-trick pony. One-and-dones. That's all we were known for. It was the theme of the entire program. And I think families and players just got a little weary of it.
Last edited by Joneslab; 03-22-2023, 10:17 AM.Comment
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It quickly became easy to portray players who needed more time in college as failures if they returned to UK, thusly increasing bleeding of the roster and making it necessary to reload every single offseason . No one wanted to come here for the coaching, the opportunity to win titles and rack up trophies, the university. Sure, they might wanted those things but objective number one by a huge margin was to get in, get what you need, and get out. Cason Wallace reminded us so concisely.
The signs were there but we didn’t always respond to them, and several of the responses were insufficient. He cheated himself and the game. All for the love of money.Comment
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Right, but I'm only talking about getting them. In bulk, like he was early on.
That's the difference. Whether they'll turn out to be actually as good as their rankings say is another story. I'm just saying he accomplished something that's been eluding him for several years.Comment
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In the early years, though, UK scouted and identified the best players. That has waned and as such I’m not sure I’m comfortable in trusting that the guys will definitely work out like I was in ~2015.
So I see it as being different.
And getting them doesn’t guarantee they’ll be on the court next year. I’m nervous about Dillingham as we have mentioned on here many times. I mean, Shaedon Sharpe did so much good for the program.Comment
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He's recruited a clump of the best if the rankings line up. Theoretically, there aren't many better than these guys by the numbers. A few but not many. I mean these are the players he targeted right off the bat...and got.
I mean maybe they'll end up being below other players in the class. It has happened--B.J. Boston, E.J. Montgomery, Skal (the number 1 player in the class), etc.
But if you look at what he's done all across his career culminating in TyTy and Cason Wallace these past two years, I think an argument can be made that he can still scout. I just don't think he can get.
If you put six Cason Wallaces on this past team we'd obviously still be playing. Guy was a killer. Chris Livingston was not quite that caliber but the recruiting services didn't quite see him that way, so even that shook out. A raw, "positionless" athlete is what we got.
I don't think there's evidence to suggest the scouting has fallen off. That isn't what's happening here.Comment
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