Screw this trash. OP joins the ignore list purely due to being a dumbass.
Do we miss Cal yet?
- Thread starter WilmoreCat
- Start date
Yep. But also the main problem in all of this.
He had to go. You can't have that happen twice in the last two seasons with a second round exit in between and keep your job at UK. You just can't. That's not the standard here.
Having said that..........if I had a choice between Cal and Pope going forward............I still feel like we would have been better off keeping Cal in the long haul.
Pope is just here a season and a half. I hope like hell he can turn this thing around.........but the scorelines aren't suggesting so at the moment.
People freak out over the 1st round upsets but if you think that's bad........we are heading towards getting seeds where we won't even be favored in the first round of tournaments........or heading to completely missing.
That's even worse.
That's even worse.
I mean....that happend the last five or so years of Cal too. We've a pile of inconsistent mess since the E8 loss to AU.
FYI I’m in no way saying I would take him back.
I wanted him gone like yesterday,but what we have now is no hope and we’re stuck with him for atleast a couple more years.
If we got rid of all of our cupcakes this year for a shortened season (like 2021), Pope absolutely could wind up with single digit wins. The covid year we got to play just 2 non power confefence games and a crap ton of games cancelled/not-scheduled. You know what pope's record would be this year if that was the case? He'd be 4-5 on the season. Im not convinced we are winning 6 SEC games.
The fact that some fans here are too GD stupid to still be unable to comprehend the shortened COVID season is really getting tiresome. Their either too stupid, or their hatred for Cal still has them 100% jaded. And neither is good for us.
I dunno.
I mean 19 we had a 2 seed. And was an OT away from a final four.
2020 no tournament.......but we were projected to be a 4 seed.
2021 obviously was a clusterfu"ck. I feel like we at least need to admit that year was weird tho. I mean heck Duke didn't make the tournament either.
2022 was a 2 seed. So that's fine.
2023 was a 6 seed. Not great but still handled 11 seed Providence in the first round there.
2024 was a 3 seed.
It was certainly a mixed bag but really at no point did I ever feel we were in danger of not being relevant. Especially when two of the last three years the seeding wasn't bad at all.
People need to at least have an honest conversation about what 2021 season was lol.
Honestly not making it in 2013 was way worse............it's just people kinda gave Cal a pass on that since he won the title the previous year.
Cal's biggest issue IMO was also his strength.
He got these massive classes with all this NBA talent. And most of them worked out well here. But then they would leave. It was always a roller coaster with Cal. He wasn't consistent. And that ultimately led to his downfall here.
You compare that to some of the elite coaches and that's what IMO separated them. Looking at Bill Self resume at KU it's like looking at a long listing of 1s, 2s, and 3s. That's what people want UK to be like.
He got these massive classes with all this NBA talent. And most of them worked out well here. But then they would leave. It was always a roller coaster with Cal. He wasn't consistent. And that ultimately led to his downfall here.
You compare that to some of the elite coaches and that's what IMO separated them. Looking at Bill Self resume at KU it's like looking at a long listing of 1s, 2s, and 3s. That's what people want UK to be like.
19- last deep run.
2020- we will never know. But the beginning of that year was HORRID.
2021- Cal should've been axed as that was his SECOND missed tournament, but got the Covid excuse.
2022 we lost to freaking St. Peter's in the second round. Inexcusable especially as a TWO so not fine.
2023 and lost in second round. Again....not fine.
2024 and lost in the first with two T10 draft picks. Cal retreats.
Two tourney wins in four years.
That's not ok here.
I’ll guarantee his loser *** never sniffs a final 4…much less four of them.
And I wanted Cal gone as bad as anyone.
UK would have made it if Noel didn't get hurt. The resume was at least worthy of a trip to Dayton. They let n Boise and mtsu instead. The injury doomed any chance they had. You can't lose your best player from a mediocre average team and survive.
Yeah I agree with this. That team TBF was certainly a team that should have been in the tournament.
No. Cal needed to go because of the player’s first mantra.
Nothing against him for that. He said it was his mission from day 1 and never wavered.
But UK needs a program first even if not as good a coach as Cal.
The problem is that the guy can’t just be a cheerleader.
Making the wrong hire after Cal doesn’t mean Cal should have stayed.
We just don’t need to let the mistake continue.
But Mitch will. Only way Pope leaves is if he decides to go.
Nothing against him for that. He said it was his mission from day 1 and never wavered.
But UK needs a program first even if not as good a coach as Cal.
The problem is that the guy can’t just be a cheerleader.
Making the wrong hire after Cal doesn’t mean Cal should have stayed.
We just don’t need to let the mistake continue.
But Mitch will. Only way Pope leaves is if he decides to go.
Ahh yes. But that goes back to the whole thing about the only thing that matters.........is March.
Which ......fine ok. He got upset two of the last three years...........with teams that were wayyyyyy better than the teams they lost to.
But then you make the coaching change......because at that point you have to right............but if your Mitch are you really doing the right thing by getting rid of Cal there in terms of the future of the program?
I'm not entirely sure about that.
This is the whole point in all of this. We put soooo much stock into a one and done tournament. And completely ignore the fact that 1) upsets happen and 2) acknownledging that upsets happen, we might be better off NOT making the change based on it.
That might not be the popular but if Cal has a bunch of seasons that are better than Pope's in the future, we need to at least ask the question here.
And I know some will say ahh it's not about firing Cal but replacing him with Pope when we should have gotten X, Y and Z. Fact is we didn't get X, Y and Z. It was Pope or Cal. UK just isn't the dream destination for most of the top rated coaches anymore sadly.
Yes, Cal was trending down. And you can't let it continue. Look what he did a Arky last year. If he had that start at UK the year after losing to Oakland, my goodness, Lexington would've been on literal fire.
March matters. So does November.
This is Kentucky it matters from October to April and I don't understand why that's so hard. Sure you're gonna lose games. Only the most rabid of numpties understands that. But you can't lose games repeatedly like we've been doing at be a representative of UK basketball.
It'd be one thing if we were at 5 losses and they'd all been tough scraps of single digit loses (like UF's). That's not what is happening and that difference matters.
Pope was a panic hire. Plain and simple. Nothing more; nothing less.
Hell no I don't miss Cal. Those last five years were terrible. Pope had a decent run last year but injuries killed our season. This year is a dumpster fire so far and it isn't due to injury but instead recruiting. Pope gets one more year to show us something, and if he fails then he gets the ax and we try again, but I will never miss post 2020 Calipari.
To me the bold is most alarming thing. Even last season it was like this.
It's like you have to say well great they fought back in some of these and even won some but why on earth are you consistently down by 20 to begin with?
That's not what great teams do. That's not what even good teams do.
Pope needs to figure this out.........quickly. Or he'll lose this fanbase.
He's already there or really damn close.
He had some of these last year. No biggie- happens. First year; you're going to have some slipups.
You can't come out. Get torched by your in-state rival, say some weird crap about a pregame incident, say its nothing when it obviously was something and still something, win a couple of solid games, and then come back out and get torched again.
1-5 in ranked wins and most of those losses were blowouts.
I can't defend it anymore. Either he fixes it or he goes. It's that simple.
Its starting threads like this that makes want to run for congress so I can try and help the out educational system so we stop letting dumbassez roam free in the world
one damn tourney win his last five years. ONE
one damn tourney win his last five years. ONE
Certainly don’t miss Calipari. He wasn’t going to chase championships at UK. His roster construction reflected his primary goal and was knowingly antithetical to winning titles. He seemed to be determined to spite any criticism of his approaches by doubling down on them instead of making any adjustments. Calipari didn’t adjust his defense to reflect the increased reliance on 3pt. shooting, and of course offense was “go make a play”.
Pope not working doesn’t mean UK should have kept Calipari, it means Barnhart didn’t succeed in bringing in the best coach at a place where getting one of the best available coaches should not be difficult.
Pope not working doesn’t mean UK should have kept Calipari, it means Barnhart didn’t succeed in bringing in the best coach at a place where getting one of the best available coaches should not be difficult.
Never going to miss Cal. He needed to be fired several years ago.
Hell no. At least Pope beats the mid majors. Cal is washed up.
Yeah, he had a good tournament run last year, but he was an 11 seed for a reason and he blew a huge lead in the SS by doing what he has always done. No thank you.
Cal is sucking too, only he's sucking with a lot more talent. He's wasted more talent than Dean Smith ever wished to waste.
There are more than 2 options. Still happy as hell Cal is gone.
Cal's highs, stopped happening 10 years ago. Anything we saw after 2015, was nothing more than great players making him look good.
If the option to get the 2009-2015 version of Cal was on the table, sure, but that Cal is long gone and he ain't coming back.
idk man i consider when we beat alabama by 30 and edwards having a perfect game a high
have we had anything like that under pope, or like any excitement
Cal did that to himself. He’s the one that chose to stop being a boss and start being an agent that cared more about winning the draft then winning college games. He controlled his own destiny.
The Cal we had from 2009-2015, was a boss, the Cal we had after that, was a soft talent agent that felt like mind f*cking the fanbase that put him on a pedestal.
There are many reasons for why he fell off. He changed his priorities, he got soft, he stopped using the bench and duke took his lunch every year on the recruiting trail. He didn't fight to get it back.
He's not a good enough coach to win without supreme talent.
Imagine Kentucky right now with Acuff, Richmond, Thomas, Wagner, Cal and $22,000,000 to spend.
We’d be a whole lot better off than where we are with Mark Pope and no recruits on the horizon. I get it. He made people mad the last few years including myself. Let’s not be prideful and act like we’d much rather be losing than have the hall of fame coach lol
If JMI was really an issue Cal would have the guts to make it known. He also would have Stokes and Collins already signed.
We’d be a whole lot better off than where we are with Mark Pope and no recruits on the horizon. I get it. He made people mad the last few years including myself. Let’s not be prideful and act like we’d much rather be losing than have the hall of fame coach lol
If JMI was really an issue Cal would have the guts to make it known. He also would have Stokes and Collins already signed.
The best they played that year was the first half of the first game against Maryland.
That Archie Griffin wink at the beginning of the ESPN show All Access still burns me to this day.
Okay, but for this excersize, are we getting 2009-2015 Cal, or are we getting the Cal we just got rid of?
I know the answer to this.
If we were guaranteed to get 2010 Cal back, every single dude on here would take that, but that Cal is long gone.
So do we compare Pope to the current version of Cal? We should, because that's the only Cal that exists.
Great post. It’s how I feel too.
Yeah, Pope is failing right now, but how the hell are these guys forgetting all the bad home losses to Richmond and uncw come to mind.
How can everyone totally forget the losses to Saint Peters and Oakland?
And the worst thing of all, 9-16 with 3 NBA talents on the roster. I don't care what Pope does the rest of this season, it won't be anywhere close to Cal's failures from 20-24.
Then the ******* mocked us in his press conferences while his 9 million dollar a year *** was sucking.