Jerry Tipton: Maui's 'weak' field turned out all right

Moments before the Sunday news conference that tipped off the EA Sports Maui Invitational last Thanksgiving Week, Tournament Chairman Dave Odom could hear gathering reporters denigrating the 2010 field.

"All the media were whispering," Odom recalled last week. "They didn't say it loudly, but I heard it: This field was not as good as other fields."

Such a notion proved wildly inaccurate.

Connecticut became the fourth team to win both the Maui Invitational and the NCAA Tournament in the same season. North Carolina did it in 2008-09 and 2004-05, plus Michigan did it in 1988-89.

Another team on Maui, Kentucky, advanced to the Final Four. A third team, Wichita State, won the National Invitation Tournament.

"That's what the Maui experience is all about," said Odom, the former coach at South Carolina and, before that, Wake Forest. "I hope the coaches feel that way."

UK Coach John Calipari didn't complain about the Maui field. But he was candid about his reservations of what Maui could do or undo for his freshman-oriented team. He fretted that the trip might prove too much for his players and cause the season to unravel.

Clearly, that wasn't the case, something Calipari seemed to acknowledge upon reflection.

During the NCAA Tournament, the UK coach credited the experience of the Maui Invitational as a factor in the development of freshmen Brandon Knight and Terrence Jones.

"Probably the best thing that happened to Brandon was Hawaii," Calipari said. "Where we played top-notch opponents and ... he realized that he had a ways to go."

In three games on Maui, Knight committed 18 turnovers and got credit for eight assists. He made 17 of 47 shots (three of 22 from three-point range).

Knight nearly reversed the assist-to-turnover numbers in the Southeastern Conference Tournament with 17 and eight, respectively. In the NCAA Tournament East Regional, he was named Most Outstanding Player.

"Since that time," Calipari said in reference to Maui, "it has been a steady climb. And he's such a hard worker and so conscientious; he has just gotten better and better."

Speaking of Jones, Calipari said the freshman forward "took 44 shots in three games, and that's all he talked about was him." Actually, Jones took 41 on Maui and made 22 (four of eight from three-point range).

But Calipari's point was that Jones became a more team-oriented player. "Taken a little bit of a backseat so we can step forward," the UK coach said.

Unlike media grumbling, Calipari's concerns about playing on Maui made an impression upon Odom. Odom wants a program such as Kentucky playing in the Maui Invitational as often as possible. He's already penciled in UK for 2014 and plans to call Calipari with a formal invitation in the next few weeks.

"We hope they'll say yes immediately," Odom said. "No question, we do want the University of Kentucky."

Cal: Job rumors

Speculation about John Calipari heading to the New York Knicks emerged on Friday. Of course, it did.

Spring time means dogwoods blossoming, the sighting of robins and speculating about coaches moving to new jobs. Calipari has made this a well-worn path, although he deserves points for creativity with last year's colorful variation on the theme: William "World Wide Wes" Wesley orchestrating a player-coach package deal of LeBron James and Calipari to a lucky NBA franchise.

Such speculation can be good for business. Coach as hot commodity turns prospects' heads and gives college bosses an incentive to sweeten existing contracts. When at Massachusetts and Memphis, Calipari was the subject of such speculation. Repeatedly. So why not Kentucky?

After becoming Memphis coach in March 2000, Calipari became the subject of such speculation in:

■ March 2001. Linked to South Carolina job. Receives 82-percent pay raise from Memphis.

■ April 2003. Linked to Pittsburgh, plus the Los Angeles Clippers and Philadelphia 76ers of the NBA. Calipari says he's removing himself from consideration for the 76ers job, although the Commercial Appeal in Memphis notes that no one from the 76ers ever said the team was interested in Calipari.

■ December 2003. Linked to St. John's after the school fires Mike Jarvis. Receives contract extension and pay raise from Memphis.

■ May 2005. New Cleveland Cavaliers owner Dan Gilbert speaks to Jerry West and Calipari about leading and coaching the team. Calipari says he's not a candidate.

■ March 2006. Linked to jobs at Indiana and then N.C. State. Receives pay raise and permission to be sole beneficiary of shoe deal he can negotiate on behalf of the Memphis program.

■ March 2007. The Kentucky job opens. Calipari acknowledges there might be better jobs than Memphis, but he notes the loaded roster he's got at Memphis. "There may not be a better team than the one I'm going to have for the next couple years, and you don't leave that unless the commitment changes, unless it's not there," he says. (Something to think about as UK appears to have a star-studded roster for next season.) Receives contract extension and pay raise from Memphis.

■ March 2009. Linked to Kentucky job. He addresses rumors he'll leave for UK by saying, "This (Memphis) is where I want to coach."

Bad news bearers

UK President Lee T. Todd Jr. and Athletics Director Mitch Barnhart questioned the timing of a Foxsports.com report. On the eve of UK's game against Connecticut in the Final Four, Foxsports.com reported that former UK basketball staffer Bilal Batley had made impermissible calls to prospects prior to abruptly leaving the program a few months after coming from Memphis with John Calipari.

Assuming Foxsports.com timed the report to ensure maximum impact, don't athletics departments and university presidents time announcements for maximum effect? Why is it wrong for the media to do so?

Bottom line: There is never a good time for unfavorable publicity.

Weight of expectation

Josh Harrellson, who epitomized UK's surprising success this season, noted that a lack of expectations is a relative term.

"With all the tradition we have here and to get back to the Final Four for the first time since 1998, it is special, especially in my senior year," he said. "This season, no one really expected us to do this. Kentucky basketball has such a good following, and our fans expect us to get here every year. It can be tough."

Academic concerns

Brandon Knight came to UK with a well-chronicled history of academic success in high school. His grade-point average of 4.3 created headlines and applause.

With him apparently mulling a decision to enter this year's NBA Draft, Knight's academic career will be a consideration, his mother, Tonya Knight, said.

Knight is much further along academically than UK fans might suspect. His mother said he brought 22 college credit hours to UK. Counting his freshman year and classes last summer, a college degree is within sight.

"He has only a year, a year and a half left," Tonya Knight said. "... (A degree is) within striking distance."

As of Saturday evening, Draftexpress.com projected Knight as the seventh player taken, Enes Kanter eighth and Terrence Jones 11th.

NBAdraft.net also had the trio from UK taken in the lottery: Kanter fourth, Knight seventh and Jones 14th.

Money: Yea, nay

With his ability to sustain UMass as a viable national program in the 1990s, John Calipari was asked how Final Four participants Virginia Commonwealth and Butler could keep enhancing their basketball profiles.

"They've got great administrations, both of them, great ADs," Calipari said. "That snowball is big, and it's rolling downhill. My suggestion is, push it faster because, down the road a little bit, there's going to be a ridge, and that snowball has to make it over that ridge. If you don't push it down the hill faster, it won't make it over that ridge.

"If you want to keep this rolling, you reinvest in practice facilities. You reinvest in all the things that surround these players, academic support, the recruiting budget so they can continue to go out in doing it, scheduling, driving TV games."

Calipari saluted Bob Marcum and R.C. Johnson, his athletics directors at UMass and Memphis, respectively.

"They kept reinvesting in the programs, which kept the program going to the next level," he said. "I think that's so important for those programs."

However, Butler Coach Brad Stevens suggested that money was of limited importance. When asked about Butler advancing to back-to-back Final Fours, Stevens said, "We're not where we are because of dollars spent on practice facilities, and those type of things. We're where we are because we have unbelievable people. People are greater resources than any amount of dollars."

'Meant to be'

After UK beat his team in the NCAA Tournament, North Carolina Coach Roy Williams suggested that the hand of destiny might have played a part.

"You know, sometimes things may be meant to be," he said.

UConn could say the same thing after dodging potential game-winning shots by Arizona in the West Region final and UK in the national semifinals.

Shooting conditions

Before Kentucky played Connecticut, Jon Hood dismissed any concerns about depth perception in Reliant Stadium.

"Division I, II, III, NAIA player, anywhere there's a basketball goal, it takes you five minutes to get used to the rim (and) sight lines," he said. "There are some drills you do to take care of that, and that's what we did."

Hood also shrugged off the court, which was raised a few feet above the football surface at Reliant Stadium.

"The drop-off is a lot closer than, say, Vandy," Hood said before adding a moment later, "Vandy just set it up for us, that's all."

UK made a season-low 33.9 percent of its shots against UConn. The previous season low of 35.8 percent came at Tennessee.

Although the poor shooting in the UConn-Butler championship game raised questions about Reliant Stadium, maybe UConn's defense deserves credit. Two of UK's four worst-shooting performances came against the Huskies: the 33.9 percent in a Final Four held in a football stadium and the 36.7 percent in the season's coziest gym, the Lahaina Civic Center.

Last conversation

Georgetown College's "Conversations with Champions" ends Wednesday when host Billy Reed speaks with Hall of Fame jockeys Pat Day and Chris McCarron. The event, which is free to the public, will be at the Richard & Karen Ward Room of the Ensor Learning Resource Center. It begins at 7:30 p.m.

The yearlong series led Georgetown College to establish an Academy for Character in Sport, which seeks to change the culture of sports.

Reed, a former journalist with the Herald-Leader, the Courier-Journal and Sports Illustrated, is Georgetown College's second executive scholar-in-residence (former Gov. Martha Layne Collins was the first). He plans to hold a sports journalism camp for high school juniors and seniors Aug. 8-10.

Earlier conversations in the series included former UK athletics director C.M. Newton, former U of L star Junior Bridgeman; former Olympic gold-medal swimmer Mary T. Meagher; sports marketer Jim Host, and NBC sports commentator Tom Hammond.

Happy birthday

To former UK guard Derrick Jasper. He turns 23 on Wednesday.

Jasper played for Kentucky in 2006-07 and 2007-08 before transferring to UNLV. In his college career, he played for three coaches in a five-year period and overcame serious injuries (micro-fracture knee surgery while at UK and a sprained medial collateral ligament at UNLV). He scored 517 points.

This story was originally published April 10, 2011 at 12:00 AM with the headline "Jerry Tipton: Maui's 'weak' field turned out all right."