John Calipari entered this season with more pressure than ever on Kentucky fans because A) they lost to Saint Peter in the first round of the NCAA tournament last March, B) produced the worst season in modern UK history in two years, C) hasn’t reached the Final Four since 2015, and D) still has a national title Only in 13 years in the UK, despite regular employment class enrollment, ranks first nationally.
Things have only gotten worse in 12 games this season.
“They beat us very well,” Calipari said after Wednesday’s 89-75 loss in the game. Missouri That left Kentucky to 8-4 and 40 on the NET after being ranked No. 1 in KenPom.com’s preseason rankings.
Oh!
Even more alarming than their 8-4 record is that the Wildcats were 0-4 against KenPom’s top 45 team and were simply blown out (they were down 21 in the second half) by a Missouri program that finished 12- 21 last season. On that note, a shout out to Dennis Gates. Mizzou’s first-year coach inherited a mess of the situation, but he was carried through the transfer gate and now has a 12-1 team with the lone loss coming from Kansas.
Missouri looks good. The doors look great.
Yet the national headline remains that Kentucky will enter January with no first-quarter wins and even no ID. Calipari doesn’t have the kind of crushing NBA talent he used to have in the UK, nor a clear understanding of how to maximize skills on the show. That’s a bad combination that led to a rocky start to the season and knocked the Wildcats out of the updated CBS Sports Top 25 and 1 daily rankings Thursday morning.
Calipari has always had his critics, sure, but the worrying thing for him now is that his most staunch critics are die-hard fans of the program he hosts, and that hasn’t been the case at the college level since his head coach started more than three years ago. decades.
Is there still time to do things right?
Definitely.
But history tells us that once their fans have made it this far, it’s hard to get them back right away, and the fact that KenPom now expects Kentucky to lose eight more before Selection Sunday suggests the Big Blue Nation will likely spend the next few three months increasingly exasperated with a trainer, so expensive that it costs more than ever to meet expectations.
