Kentucky’s late-game failures under John Calipari are feeding a popular narrative

At least we can say this: Kentucky is once again the talk of the NCAA Men’s Basketball Tournament.

This time, for all the wrong reasons.

First things first, John Calipari isn’t going to be fired, nor should he be. Get that out of your head right now. Kentucky’s basketball coach is a Hall of Famer who has won more than 800 basketball games, who has taken teams to six Final Fours and won a national title. Don’t be ridiculous.

Even after an early-round exit as embarrassing as No. 2 seed Kentucky’s 85-79 overtime loss to No. 15 seed Saint Peter’s on Thursday night, firing John Calipari is a preposterous notion.

That said, for the coach who once sat atop the college basketball world, and let everyone know it, the trend line is inarguably pointing in the wrong direction.

And it started before the Cats became just the 10th No. 2 seed out of 145 to lose to a No. 15 seed — “St. Peter’s Day” exclaimed the sports page of the New York Daily News — or even before last season’s unthinkable-for-Kentucky 9-16 finish.

Calipari’s first six years in Lexington, Kentucky reached four Final Fours and cut down the nets in 2012. In the seven seasons since, the Wildcats’ NCAA Tournament record is just 9-5 with a couple of Elite Eight losses to show for their trouble.

Starting with the 2015 Final Four loss to Wisconsin, there has been a common thread to these agonizing defeats. Most have come in tight, possession-by-possession games in which the Cats failed to execute down the stretch — the 38-1 team’s 71-64 loss to Wisconsin in 2015, the 75-73 Luke Maye loss to North Carolina at the buzzer in the Elite Eight in 2017, the 61-58 Sweet 16 loss to Kansas State in 2018, the 77-71 overtime Elite Eight loss to Auburn in 2019.

Thursday was a different movie with the same ending. Up 68-62 with 4:12 remaining, Calipari’s Cats failed to close the deal. Again. Turnovers. Missed shots. Worst of all, when it mattered most, Kentucky exhibited a puzzling inability to either get the right play called, or run it correctly.

“I wish I had some answers with three minutes to go to help them through it,” said Calipari, the man paid almost $9 million a year to have those answers.

These failures feed into the popular narrative that while a tremendous recruiter and first-class motivator, a coach who can convince five-star players to sacrifice for the good of the team, Calipari is not at his best at the end of games.

For whatever reason, his teams, both young and old, appear to play tight at crunch time. To that end, one stat sticks out. In the 2014 title game loss to Connecticut, UK was 13-of-24 at the foul line. The Cats were 12-of-19 in their 2017 exit, 23-of-37 in 2018 and 12-of-21 in 2019. Thursday, Kentucky went 1-of-6 from the foul line in overtime.

“Again, my whole thing coming in, because I knew they had never played in this stuff, was to get them free and loose and we never got to that. Never,” the coach said afterward.

There’s another trend here, one that might be the most important, one for those who believe Jimmies-and-Joes trump X’s-and-O’s. From 2010 through 2015, Kentucky produced nine players among the top 10 selections of the NBA Draft. From 2016 through 2021, UK has produced three, the last being Kevin Knox in 2018. Current mock drafts suggest 2022 will be the fourth consecutive year without a Kentucky player being selected in the NBA top 10.

Truth be told, Calipari is not recruiting at his previous level. It’s the reason he shook up his coaching staff after last season, bringing back Orlando Antigua along with newcomer Chin Coleman. The results have been promising. His 2022 class includes two consensus top-10 prospects in Chris Livingston and Cason Wallace.

That’s the future, however. As for the here and now, under John Calipari, Kentucky has now followed arguably the worst season in its storied history with the worst NCAA Tournament loss in its storied history. That’s the bottom line.

This story was originally published March 18, 2022 at 11:31 AM.

John Clay

Lexington Herald-Leader

859-472-4218

John Clay is a sports columnist for the Lexington Herald-Leader. A native of Central Kentucky, he covered UK football from 1987 until being named sports columnist in 2000. He has covered 20 Final Fours and 42 consecutive Kentucky Derbys. Support my work with a digital subscription