Kentucky has standing invitation to Maui. It’s ‘just not good for us.’
For college basketball fans, Thanksgiving Week means more than turkey and dressing and pumpkin pie. It’s time for the Maui Invitational, an annual holiday treat that features high-level teams converging in a Polynesian paradise
Kentucky has been absent since 2010. John Calipari does not like the travel (five time zones to the west). He finds the uniqueness of three competitive games in three days needlessly taxing and superfluous — if not harmful — to the long-range goal of winning a national championship.
“We always have a young team . . . ,” he said after Friday night’s victory over Mount St. Mary’s. “We’re struggling against the teams we’re playing. You put us in that kind of event, traveling 12 hours, just not good for us.”
Calipari acknowledged that the trip provided long-lasting memories for fans. “I know the fans want me to schedule for fans,” he said. “I schedule for the kids. At the end of the day, we still have one of the best schedules in the country every year. Just can’t do it up front. You can’t.”
Still, former South Carolina Coach Dave Odom, who is chairman of the Maui Invitational, checks regularly to see if Calipari might have a change of heart.
“He said he’d think about it,” Odom said of a more recent attempt to gauge the UK coach’s interest. “I called him back. He said, ‘Nah. I don’t believe I’m ready for it.’
“But I’m going to check with him just about every other year.”
Calipari isn’t the only coach who declines a standing invitation, Odom said. Extended travel time (Los Angeles is about halfway to Hawaii from Kentucky) is a common concern.
“The travel is more of a problem for the coaches than it is for the fans and teams,” Odom said. “The coaches, you know, they get older. I’m not saying anybody’s old. Most of the coaches that don’t go usually have been three or four times. When they went, they were 45. And now, they’re 65.”
Calipari, 60, also took Memphis to Maui in 2006.
Odom said the Maui Invitational enables teams to test themselves early and get an NCAA Evaluation Tool boost (UK surely got that against Michigan State).
Then there’s an often-forgotten group. “I really do think it’s a treat for the fans,” Odom said.
Kentucky played in the Maui Invitational five times: 1993, 1997, 2002, 2006 and 2010. Terrence Jones averaged a double-double (20.7 points and 11.3 rebounds) in 2010, the year Kemba Walker‘s 29 points helped beat UK. In the Final Four the following spring, Walker and UConn again beat Kentucky.
In 2006, Calipari’s Memphis team beat UK on the third day.
Kentucky’s only Maui Invitational championship came in 1993. Jeff Sheppard, a freshman that season, needed no coaxing to recall the winning basket against Arizona in the finals.
“Jeff Brassow’s tip-in at the buzzer,” he said. “Coach (Rick) Pitino ran out on the floor and gave Brassow a big hug.”
Sheppard also recalled that Brassow went in for him at the last dead ball situation.
“Coach Pitino knew what he was doing there,” Sheppard said with a chuckle.
Sheppard is one of the few, and maybe the only Kentucky player, who has played in the Maui Invitational more than once. After redshirting as a junior (Pitino did not want him competing with Ron Mercer and Derek Anderson for playing time in 1996-97), Sheppard returned to Maui in 1997 as a fifth-year senior.
“It was a little bit different,” he said of the return trip. “I was engaged to my (future) wife. She was done with school. So she got to go on the trip with my parents.”
As for the wear and tear of travel, Sheppard said, “I don’t remember it being physically taxing at all.”
Then he added with a chuckle, “I’m sure we flew first class.”
‘He’s the hero’
During a homily this month, Father Paul Siebert held up a blue UK T-shirt. He told the worshipers that the church needed to raise money to buy a big-screen television so people could come there to watch telecasts of Kentucky games.
Siebert is the priest at St. Mark Church in Emporium, Pa., which, of course, is the hometown of Nate Sestina.
The message he hoped the UK T-shirt would help to convey? “Let’s get together and do this and support Nate,” Siebert said during a recent telephone conversation. “But it’s also a good way to get people there, so to speak. Kind of an outreach thing.”
When asked to describe the impact Sestina has made on people in Emporium, Siebert needed a moment to gather his thoughts.
“Oh my, whew!” he said. “He’s the hero. There you go. That’s the best way to put it. The town hero.”
Siebert, who has been the priest at St. Mark’s for 22 years, said he got a reaction when he used the UK T-shirt as a prop. People were “kind of surprised,” he said. “They were smiling and chuckling. You know what? I got applause. I really did.”
St. Mark’s recently posted a picture of Sestina and his basketball statistics on the church website, Siebert said. By St. Mark’s standards, it went viral. There were 47,000 hits on the church’s Twitter account.
“Is that crazy?” said Siebert, who added that a typical posting might get 50 hits. “He’s our hero, and everybody else’s, too.”
Divine intervention?
Don Sestina, the UK player’s father, said he and his wife have invited their priest, Father Paul Siebert, to join them at next month’s Kentucky-Louisville game.
Of Siebert, the elder Sestina said, “He has some pretty good connections from above.”
Join the party
Ben Jordan, the import from UK’s baseball team, was aware that wide receiver-turned-quarterback Lynn Bowden posted his willingness to immigrate to UK’s basketball team after the season.
“I saw the tweet the other day,” Jordan said Thursday. “I was, like, ‘Well, might as well.’”
Bowden is not expected to join the UK basketball team.
Credit Evansville
A father and son have been on both sides of arguably the most stunning upsets in college basketball history. Dave Odom was an assistant coach at Virginia when the No. 1-ranked Cavaliers lost to Chaminade, an NAIA school, in December of 1982.
And his son, Ryan Odom, was the head coach at UMBC in 2018 when the Retrievers became the first 16-seed to beat a No. 1 seed (coincidentally, Virginia) in an NCAA Tournament.
Both father and son said they watched portions of then No. 1-ranked Kentucky’s loss to Evansville on Nov. 12. Both said it was wiser to credit Evansville than castigate Kentucky.
“Really, I think that was a night you give Evansville credit,” the elder Odom said. “Walter McCarty had his team ready. They played without fear. Kentucky’s going to be one of the top five teams in the country when it’s all said and done.”
In a separate telephone conversation, the younger Odom echoed those thoughts.
“I wouldn’t have said Kentucky made a ton of mistakes,” Ryan Odom said. “I just think Evansville played really well.”
How upsets happen
Dave Odom and Ryan Odom recalled factors that contributed to their experience with memorable upsets.
The younger Odom noted that Virginia’s best player, De’Andre Hunter, was injured and did not play.
Virginia’s loss to Chaminade in 1982 came in the fifth of six straight road games sprinkled with high-profile opponents and two crossings of the International Date Line.
Virginia played at Duke on Dec. 8, then at Georgetown three days later in a game that had a riveting individual matchup: Ralph Sampson against Patrick Ewing.
Then Virginia flew to Tokyo for games against Houston’s Phi Slamma Jamma team and Utah on Dec. 16 and 19.
Virginia Coach Terry Holland decided to break up the trip home with a stop in Honolulu.
“Terry just felt like it was such a long trip,” Dave Odom said. “He let the kids kind of relax for a day or so.”
Adding to the unusual circumstances, the game against Chaminade was played two days before Christmas. And one of Sampson’s high school teammates played for Chaminade.
Of the chance to relax in Hawaii, Odom said, “I don’t know if that sent a message to our team that we were going to win no matter what.”
Happy birthday
To former Indiana standout and later UCLA Coach Steve Alford. He turned 55 on Saturday. . . . To sports marketing innovator Jim Host. He turned 82 on Saturday. . . . To Reid Travis. He turns 24 on Monday. . . . To associate coach Kenny Payne. He turns 53 on Monday. . . . To Steve Lockmueller. He turns 67 on Monday. . . . To LSU Coach Will Wade. He turns 37 on Tuesday.
This story was originally published November 24, 2019 at 8:35 AM.
