Is a No. 4 seed the best Kentucky can do for the NCAA Tournament?
With Selection Sunday six weeks away, ESPN March Madness maven Joe Lunardi had Kentucky as a No. 4 seed in the 2020 NCAA Tournament bracket he updated Friday.
He said the Southeastern Conference’s noticeable downturn this season probably limits UK’s upward mobility the rest of the season.
“I’m not sure the league is strong enough to boost their metrics enough to go any higher,” Lunardi said of Kentucky.
In his bracket updated Friday, Lunardi included five SEC teams: Kentucky, LSU (fifth seed), Auburn (fifth seed), Arkansas (eighth seed) and Florida (10th seed). Either Alabama or Mississippi State might give the league a sixth team in the NCAA Tournament, he said.
At this stage, Lunardi said of LSU, UK and Auburn, “You can kind of throw a blanket over all of them.”
When asked about UK’s ceiling in terms of a seed and the possibility of moving to a No. 3 seed was probably optimal.
“Short of running the table, and I don’t want to say it’s impossible, but that would seem to be a reach given the way they’re playing,” he said.
The way Kentucky is playing has been marked by a pattern of possession-by-possession tests of will in the final minutes of games. Going into this weekend, 14 of UK’s 20 games had leads of seven or fewer points inside the final seven minutes. In 11 of those games, the score was tied or could be tied in a single possession within the final six minutes.
The lack of dominance matters in how the NCAA Evaluation Tool (NET) assesses teams, Lunardi said.
The former measuring system, the Rating Percentage Index (RPI), concentrated on three factors: who you played, where you played and simply whether you won, Lunardi said. A blowout or a victory coming on a last-second shot counted the same.
The NET includes margin of victory and efficiency of play in its calculation. So, winning competitive games rather than blowouts gets noticed.
Kentucky’s November loss to Evansville is of diminishing importance, Lunardi said.
“An anomaly of some kind, but you still have to factor it in,” he said. “I think it cost them a seed (line) at this point. And I think the longer the season goes on, the less it will cost them.”
Lunardi called UK’s losses to Utah and South Carolina “unusual for them, but not unusual for what I’d call middle seeds.”
The parity that marks this season makes it “trickier” to predict seeding at the top lines of the bracket, Lunardi said.
So, which team does Lunardi think will win the 2020 NCAA Tournament? He said he anticipated Villanova and Virginia winning the last two national championships.
This year’s champion will be …
“I have no idea,” Lunardi said. “If I had to bet a mortgage payment today, I would bet Kansas.
“But, it’s a soft play, as they say in the parlance of sports books.”
Cal and Kobe
UK Coach John Calipari and the late Kobe Bryant crossed paths in the spring of 1996. Coming off guiding UMass to the Final Four, Calipari had just been hired as coach of the New Jersey Nets. Bryant was a high school phenom who had entered his name in that year’s NBA Draft.
The Nets, who had the eighth pick, worked out Bryant multiple times.
“His workouts were just so dominant for a 17-year-old,” said Bobby Marks, then a basketball operations assistant for the Nets and now an NBA front office analyst for ESPN.
Under the rules then, Bryant worked out against the Nets’ players.
“He was just so much better than those other guys,” Marks said. “And those guys were Ed O’Bannon, Khalid Reeves” and others.
Retired New York Post sportswriter Fred Kerber said that Rick Pitino told him at the time about Jerry West considering Bryant’s pre-draft workout for the Lakers the best West had ever seen.
The Nets intended to pick Bryant. Then the night before the draft, Calipari and Nets General Manager John Nash met with Bryant, his parents and uber-agent Arn Tellem. “What was thought to be us taking Kobe kind of shifted gears,” said Marks, who did not attend the meeting. “The sentiment I got was we kind of got spooked.”
The Nets’ officials were told Bryant would not play for the team, Marks said. If picked by the Nets, Bryant would play overseas until traded to a preferred team.
“The desire was always to get him to Los Angeles,” Marks said. Tellem’s agency was based there. Bryant had been a Lakers fan growing up.
Ultimately, the Nets picked Kerry Kittles, a Big East Player of the Year for Villanova. The Charlotte Hornets took Bryant with the 13th pick and then traded him to the Lakers.
Of course, it is human nature to ponder the what-if. What if the Nets picked Bryant and he played for the Nets?
“History would have changed,” Marks said.
No multiple Lakers championships with Shaquille O’Neal.
“We would have been labeled as the guys who found Kobe,” Marks said. “And it probably would have spurred our careers down the road.”
Presumably, Calipari would have been a successful long-term NBA coach.
“Probably Cal would not have gone to Memphis,” Marks said, “and maybe he’s not at Kentucky, right?”
Teaching or venting?
Former Vandy player (and Lexington native) Frank Kornet is a basketball coach for Harpeth Hall, an all-girls school in Nashville.
“I just enjoy being around kids and trying to help them …,” he said. “I think a lot of coaches are out of control. It’s about the coach a lot of times. (High school sports) should be about the kids. …
“Yes, you have to get on a kid at times. But there’s no reason to ever be demeaning to a kid (or) put them down when they feel bad.”
His son, Luke Kornet, plays for the Chicago Bulls. He is averaging 5.4 points and 2.2 rebounds.
Losing breeds doubt
UK’s victory Wednesday extended Vanderbilt’s streak of SEC regular-season defeats to a record 25 straight. Sewanee set the previous record of 24 straight in 1938-40.
Ashton Hagans acknowledged that it could be difficult for any player to deal with such a losing binge.
“It’s real tough because you just go to thinking, like, ‘Am I this good?’” he said. “‘Are we this good? Am I going to be playing basketball long enough? Am I going to make the tournament?’
“All types of questions.”
Return to coaching?
Former Vanderbilt coach Bryce Drew is working for ESPN as a commentator on American Athletic Conference games.
He’s open to the idea of returning to coaching. But Drew said that he’s enjoying television work, including the practices and shootarounds he attends to prepare for telecasts.
“It’s like you’re coaching two teams,” he said. “And you’re seeing what worked that they’d been planning on and what doesn’t work.
“It’s really been good for that.”
Happy birthday
To Rick Robey. He turned 64 on Thursday. … To Josh Carrier. He turned 37 on Thursday. … To Michigan State Coach Tom Izzo. He turned 65 on Thursday. … To Andre “the Rejector” Riddick. He turned 47 on Saturday. … To Walter McCarty. He turned 46 on Saturday. … To former UK assistant coach Doug Barnes. He turned 74 on Saturday. … To Truman Claytor. He turns 63 on Sunday (today). … To Stan Key. He turns 70 on Sunday (today). … To former Texas A&M coach Billy Kennedy. He turns 56 on Sunday (today). … To Malik Monk. He turns 22 on Tuesday. … To Ramel Bradley. He turns 35 on Wednesday. … To Tai Wynyard. He turns 22 on Wednesday.
