John Clay: Kentucky basketball draws confidence from Calipari Effect

For a team that lost to Auburn (yikes), that blew a 21-point lead and lost to Tennessee (ouch) and that is a No. 4 seed (outrageous), Kentucky sure is receiving more than its fair share of love from the ever-expanding contingent of NCAA Tournament prognosticators.

And, to be sure, the Cats are playing their best basketball of the season at the most important part of the season. To be sure, the Cats have the best guard tandem in the country entering an event in which star guards are an invaluable asset.

As it starts its 2016 NCAA Tournament run on Friday night against Stony Brook, however, Kentucky has another important factor in its postseason favor:

The Kentucky Effect has the John Calipari Effect.

The Hall of Fame coach is an indisputable Man of March. His Kentucky basketball teams have played in four of the past five Final Fours, for heaven’s sake. That’s an 80 percent success rate. In this age of parity, that’s ridiculous. In this one-and-done era, that’s crazy.

As it happens, just recently Peter Tiernan of BracketScience.com did a study to find which coaches were the “best performers against seed expectations.” Michigan State’s Tom Izzo ranked No. 1 all-time. He was followed by Syracuse’s Jim Boeheim, former Connecticut coach Jim Calhoun, former Villanova coach Rollie Massimino and none other than Calipari.

That’s an impressive feat considering Calipari’s teams are almost always among the top seeds, if not the top seed of the tournament. To meet and surpass expectations, his teams have to win and win and win again. And that they do. Calipari’s NCAA Tournament record at Kentucky: 22-4.

So what is Calipari’s secret sauce?

Let’s start with that famous Calipari swagger. The coach has a way of getting his teams to play confident and loose even in pressurized situations. No doubt some of that comes from bringing attention to himself, as Cal did this week by publicly railing against the NCAA Tournament Selection Committee — “poking the bear,” he called it Wednesday. The Cal Show removes some of the spotlight from his team.

“I want my teams to have more fun than any team in the tournament,” Calipari said Wednesday during his press conference at Wells Fargo Arena. “When you watch ’em, if we are doing our job as a staff, you’re going to say, ‘Boy, they have fun playing basketball.’”

Accomplishing that is no walk in the park, especially when you constantly shoulder the outsized expectations of being, well, Kentucky. Yet year after year, Calipari somehow punches the right buttons.

“I think it’s just the environment of being at Kentucky,” said junior forward Marcus Lee. “It’s a survive-or-die kind of place. Being in that setting the whole year sets you to be ready. He sets up the schedule where we have to play the hardest games possible.”

Ah, you say, Calipari is simply the beneficiary of amazing talent. Kentucky has produced 19 NBA draft choices, after all, something the coach himself mentions at every opportunity.

What about 2011? Starting as a No. 4 seed in the East — same starting spot as this year — Kentucky curled itself into a tight ball and rolled over No. 1 seed Ohio State and North Carolina to reach the Final Four. Two of that team’s most important pieces, Josh Harrellson and DeAndre Liggins, have so far been short-timers in the NBA.

What about 2014? That team was a hot mess at the end of the regular season before Calipari administered his famous tweak — more psychological than strategic — and Kentucky rode the wave all the way to the championship game before Connecticut escaped with the trophy.

Success breeds success. It’s not just the expectation of success, but the confidence a team has in itself that it can be successful. As Calipari says, confidence comes from demonstrated performance. In Kentucky’s case, the players are confident in the demonstrated performance of their coach.

“He knows what to do. He’s been there,” said senior Alex Poythress. “He’s not feeding bull---- or anything like that. His track record speaks for itself.”

This story was originally published March 16, 2016 at 9:39 PM with the headline "John Clay: Kentucky basketball draws confidence from Calipari Effect."