As a lifetime card carrying member of Big Blue Nation, there are some things that I have come to expect from our basketball team. I expect to be competitive every season. I expect to make the tournament every year and make it to at least the Sweet 16. I expect good players to be beating down the door to play for our historic program. I expect to beat the Louisville Cardinals four out of every five years. I expect to be ranked somewhere in the top 15 all season long and I expect to get no worse than a four seed when it comes to tournament time.
I think all of these expectations are quite reasonable considering our program’s tradition, coach and support. I don’t think John Calipari would disagree with anything that I typed. So why was John Calipari getting on fans about expectations in his post game press conference after Saturday’s game against Alabama?
Coach Cal had a message for Big Blue Nation: chill out. As the Wildcats are now sitting at 19-1 and 5-0 in the SEC, not to mention in the midst of a 47 game home winning streak, some members of our beloved fan base are in freak out mode. Why are they in freak out mode? Because our Wildcats aren’t beating every team they play by 30 points or more.
Before the season started we watched as Cal pulled in players like Anthony Davis, Michael Kidd-Gilchrist, Marquis Teague and Kyle Wiltjer. These players comprised yet another #1 recruiting class. A recruiting class that eclipsed the John Wall class and a bunch that many say could be the greatest of all time.
If the recruiting class wasn’t enough to get excited about, we all saw Doron Lamb and Terrence Jones forgo the NBA in order to come back and try to win a title after bowing out in the Final Four the previous season.
We were all witnessing the construction of what would be one of the fastest, most talented teams that had ever taken the court in Lexington. The 2011/2012 season would be a sight to behold as the Cats were expected to blow out every team in it’s path, go undefeated and win title #8. Well, that’s what some of us expected would happen.
But expectations are a funny thing; they are rarely met. The Cats lost by one to an Indiana team that was inferior. They aren’t blowing out teams in the SEC ever game. Terrence Jones isn’t playing like Kevin Garnett. Marquis Teague isn’t John Wall and he can’t run the offense. Something’s wrong with Doron Lamb. Darius Miller isn’t aggressive enough.
I don’t believe these statements. These are statements that I gather from Twitter and message boards, and I am just relaying them to you. If I am reading the message boards and tweets, you know John Calipari is as well.
Coach Cal called out the fan base sitting in Rupp after a six point victory over Alabama and told them to quit worrying about this team, and to enjoy the fact that they are winning. Teams like Alabama and Auburn are Division I basketball programs that have talented players. They aren’t going to lay down and let Kentucky walk all over them. They are going to fight tooth and nail to beat Kentucky; as will Georgia, Mississippi State, Florida, Vanderbilt and all of the other teams left on Kentucky’s schedule.
Calipari was a;sp quick to point out that these players are young, some of them only 18 years old, and they aren’t robots. They have things go on in their personal lives that may effect their play or they may just have an off night, something that Anthony Davis experienced against Alabama.
Most of the ire of the fans has been aimed at Terrence Jones. He had one poor game against Indiana. He then broke his pinky finger on his shooting hand, which caused him to sit out a few games and was limited for a time after that. Many people were calling him a headcase and saying that he was all talent and no heart.
Jones is averaging 12 points a game as well as 6 rebounds a game, which are down from last year. But last year he didn’t have Anthony Davis and Michael Kidd-Gilchrist on the team either. There are six players on Kentucky’s team averaging double figures in scoring. The talent is spread out and not one player has to do anything extra special in order to win. It is a true team effort. Terrence Jones’ numbers are down not because he isn’t playing as hard, but because he doesn’t have to do as much with all of the talent surrounding him.
Now, it doesn’t help expectations when there are certain fan blogs that routinely call out players on Twitter and play the “woe is me” card when Kentucky doesn’t win by 30. These blogs and the fans they cater to are not representative of our fan base as a whole. They are part of a lunatic fringe and are they looking for people to give them any kind of attention, negative or positive, so the best thing to do is ignore them.
The kids we have this season play extremely hard. They like each other. They like their coach. They like playing for the name on the front of their jersey and they love making the fans happy by winning, which they do on a regular basis.
So let’s all take a step back and appreciate this wonderful season. It’s already almost February and the tournament is around the corner. Savor this team, because next year it will be a different bunch of players. This is a special group.
Stop worrying about how much the Cats win by and just love the fact that they are winning.