Kentucky Wildcats Basketball: Talk of perfection creates perfect drama

Mandatory Credit: Spruce Derden-USA TODAY Sports

Sometime last night after the Kentucky Wildcats loss to Arkansas, Adam Zagoria sent out perhaps the most accurate and telling tweet of the year:

And today, that tweet served as a self-fulfilling prophecy as some media members that cover UK proceeded to eat the you young.  Or at least the college freshmen that dared think about perfection and wanted to win every game.  Kyle Tucker opened the salvo on Twitter with this tweet

And out come the wolves. When questioned about it by Cameron Mills, Tucker went on the defensive and blamed Calipari for the 40-0 talk and said that the media was not to blame for the talk of perfection.

To prove his point, Tucker then fired off in rapid fire succession seven straight player quotes where the team expressed a desire to go 40-0. And in the history of mock Kentucky controversies, this has to be one of the stupidest ones to hash up.

Yes, Calipari talked about going 40-0.  And his players talked about 40-0.  And don’t we all want our coaches and players to have a goal and to set it high? Every year, Media Days are basically a boring hot air fest where every coach and every player talks about how this is going to be their year.  And some UK players set their goals high and talked about “40-0”.  The horror. I get that John Calipari embraced the goal and hyped it.  What do you expect him to do?  Say, “No, we are going for 32-8.  We are going to lose some stupid games nad make the fans really mad, but at the end of the year, we will be OK.  32-8 sounds good to me”.

What do you want your coach and players to say:  “We are going to win every game” or   “We are going to compete and try our best to win the SEC”. I don’t fault Calipari for hyping the “40-0”.  Preseason is the time for unrealistic expectations and quotes and I want my coach talking perfection and national titles.  Thing is, it’s not a legal and binding contract.  It’s just talk.  Name me one NFL coach that said “We are going to try to go 8-8 this year.  Hopefully that will buy me another year”.  I will name you a coach that did not make it past four of the regular season.

Preseason hype is natural.  And John Calipari is the PT Barnum of hype.  And he sold that 40-0 talk to everyone like a magic elixir. But to keep bringing it up and making it an issue  28 games in before the calendar turns to March is kind of silly.  If you bought the magic elixir  and feel cheated, just realize you bought into the hype promising something that is next to impossible and tell yourself not to get fooled again.  You certainly don’t go back to the carnival barker and demand your money back and a suitable explanation as to why it did not work.

To be fair, Tucker is not the only journalist on the whack-a-Cal bandwagon today.  I’ve seen some truly absurd things written by fellow blogger that are full of venom and even the pros are jumping on Twitter to vent.

Take a deep breath people … and let this season run it’s course before going all crazy on the homefront.

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