Kentucky Wildcat Basketball – John Calipari: Mad Scientist, or Mad Genius?

Hold your questions until the end of the show please.

I love this part of the year. Things get tense, activity heats up, and everyone becomes a semi-professional basketball coach. We have about 2M of them in Kentucky. And nationwide, the numbers are staggering. Everyone has the answers to what it will take to perfect the Cats, make them unbeatable competitors and put them in the NCAA Finals without breaking a sweat. Everyone except Coach Cal it seems. If you listen to his usual coachspeak, the Cats are still a ship without a rudder who’s sails are torn and impossible to keep aloft. They are on the sea of inconsistency and headed for the reefs of despair if they do not get their heads on straight and learn to listen to their leader. And that doesn’t even count this ludicrous idea (according to the experts in the semi-professional coaching ranks) of playing only 6 players. Has Cal lost his mind? Has the Mad Scientist gone off the deep end?

The answer to that question is an unequivocal no. Not even close.

John Calipari is the master of making do. And I am not talking about not having recruits on the bench either. Not all recruits progress at the same rate. If they did, then we would have 9 guys deep on the bench, and this discussion would be a moot point. But they do not, so for the next couple of weeks, and maybe even a little further, we are going to have to play shorthanded. Everyone knows that Calipari did not plan to do this, he is simply playing the cards that fate and the almighty NCAA have dealt him. They are not perfect cards mind you. But they are some very good ones. Sure Calipari likes playing poker with a royal flush in his hand, but he can play with a full house too. You see poker is played as much against the player as it is their cards. Now when you have a Royal Flush, there really is no poker game. You simply bet and bet and bet until everyone else runs out of money. They cannot beat you, they can only hope to maybe tie and split the pot. Now until this year, everyone was of the opinion that Cal was only a mediocre poker player. He was great when he had all the cards, but not much when he had to run a bluff. Well, it seems as though not just players get better the more they play. Calipari is doing what some are saying is his best coaching job of his career this year.

At Memphis, according to the experts, it was all about not having any competition. No one to play against meant that anyone could take good talent and win. Last year he had what some are calling the greatest recruiting class of all time, and so he won with the players, not with his wits or coaching abilities.

The “experts” cannot claim that this year. The bench is short, and Cal didn’t get all of the guys he wanted, so he is working his backside off to keep the Cats in the thick of things. He is doing more than that though. This team is coming along slowly, not like last year’s squad that knew what you were going to tell them before you said it. These guys are learning at a different pace, so they are coming along more slowly. Having said that, it does not mean they will not be ready when the time comes. Yes, they dropped a game or two that mystified the experts, but they are learning from that as well. Did I want to see the Cats drop that game in Athens? No. Matter of fact, I thought they would make short work of the Bulldogs. I also thought that they would stretch their lead from 15 at halftime Saturday, to about 30 by the end of the game, but Georgia decided to actually work around the Cats and their game plan in the second half.

This will not be the end of the semi-pro coaches association meetings this year. They occur every Sunday and Wednesday during the season, and are usually filled with the dos and donts of the previous contest through the eyes of the experts. But we have the best coach in the game right now folks. Let’s let him do his job. After all, he is the one actually getting paid to do it.

Calipari knows what he is doing. He knows what it is going to take to get the maximum effort out of this team. His thinking may be unconventional at times, but it is not abstract. Every time we second guess the man, he makes us look bad. Maybe we ought to stop trying.

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