I have to admit. I am still a bit shell shocked and disappointed over UK’s loss to West Virginia last night. But being a lifelong Miami Dolphins and Cincinnati Reds fan, I have developed and incredible amount of resiliency on dealing with an unfulfilled season. I did a good job of staying off the internet last night after the game and stayed away from virtually all forms of social media … sometimes I find that our own fans are as tough to deal with as the haters. But I have to admit that when I awoke this morning, it was with a different feeling than with other recent seasons. A search of the internet re-affirmed my thoughts.
Make no doubt about it — the wolves are out in full force this morning following Kentucky’s loss … and that can mean just one thing.
KENTUCKY BASKETBALL IS UNDENIABLY BACK
The first piece that caught my eye this morning was the undeniable hack job by Mike Freeman on CBSsports.com. I am not really sure what to make of CBSsports.com … its seems like all their articles lately have been by people with axes to grind, and Freeman gets out all his UK envy with his article entitled “Kentucky doesn’t get it’s money’s worth out of Calipari”.
Ludicrous, I know. And I am not going to do a hack job of the article. We know what we are getting by the headline, But the fact that this article was even written answers the question in itself. Was Mike Freeman writing bashing articles on UK and Billy Gillispie last season?
No. After the last two seasons, no one was talking about Kentucky basketball. Period. And if they were, it was “oh what a shame” conversations. And now, Mike and his hating co-horts will keep talking about John Calipari and Kentucky for the next several months and the next several years.
Kentucky basketball under Gillispie was a shell of it’s former self. The swagger was gone. In just one season, John Calipari brought this team from the ashes of back to back to back to back 10 loss seasons to a 35-3 record and catapulted this team into a season long top five ranking and made the the most talked about team in college basketball. For the entire season, you could not have a conversation about college basketball without Kentucky and Calipari being mentioned prominently.
Any one with a brain about knowing what goes on in college basketball knows that the position of Kentucky’s coach is about more than wins and losses. It requires an ambassador and John Calipari has filled that role amazingly. In one season, he has mended fences among the BBN that had been cracking since 1999 or so. He reached out to the legends of Kentucky’s past and reconciled them with the vision of the present and the future. John Calipari single handily brought back together a fractured Big Blue Nation and made them whole again.
I could go on, but the point has been made. Without a doubt, John Calipari was worth every single penny he has been paid this season. Is CBS getting their money’s worth from Mike Freeman with his lazy writing and snide asides? I doubt it. I had not heard of Freeman before this and doubt I will ever talk about him again. But we know Freeman is going to keep following Kentucky and spewing his own for of hater-ade. We would not have it any other way. As long as you keep writing your articles about Calipari, you are pretty much admitting that Kentucky and Calipari are back in college basketball royalty.
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