BTI's Rants and Ramblings: If You Are Complaining About Cal, Go Find an Empty Room

A little breakdown of what 5 of the top coaches in college basketball have done over the past 7 years:

John Calipari
Total Record: 217-47
Conference Record: 95-25
Regular Season Conference Titles: 4
Conference Tournament Titles: 4
NCAA Tournament Record: 23-5
Losses to lower seeded teams: 2
Final Fours: 4
National Titles: 1
NBA 1st Round Draft Picks: 19

Bill Self
Total Record: 216-43
Conference Record: 101-21
Regular Season Conference Titles: 7
Conference Tournament Titles: 4
NCAA Tournament Record: 16-7
Losses to lower seeded teams: 6
Final Fours: 1
National Titles: 0
NBA 1st Round Draft Picks: 9

Mike Krzyzewski
Total Record: 210-47
Conference Record: 92-28
Regular Season Conference Titles: 1
Conference Tournament Titles: 2
NCAA Tournament Record: 19-5
Losses to lower seeded teams: 3
Final Fours: 2
National Titles: 2
NBA 1st Round Draft Picks: 10

Roy Williams
Total Record: 188-70
Conference Record: 83-37
Regular Season Conference Titles: 3
Conference Tournament Titles: 3
NCAA Tournament Record: 14-5
Losses to lower seeded teams: 2
Final Fours: 1
National Titles: 0 (potential to change)
NBA 1st Round Draft Picks: 6

Tom Izzo
Total Record: 188-68
Conference Record: 86-40
Regular Season Conference Titles: 2
Conference Tournament Titles: 3
NCAA Tournament Record: 15-7
Losses to lower seeded teams: 3
Final Fours: 2
National Titles: 0
NBA 1st Round Draft Picks: 1

Here is what John Calipari has done amongst this group:
-Most wins overall
-2nd most conference wins
-2nd most conference regular season titles
-Most conference tournament titles
-Most wins and winning percentage in NCAA Tournament
-Fewest losses to lower seeded teams in NCAA Tournament
-Most Final Fours
-One of 2 coaches to win national title
-Most NBA 1st Round Draft picks (by 10!)

And this is stacking John Calipari up against the best in his business.  Why do I put this up here?  Because once again the fans, albeit a vocal minority, voice displeasure about Coach Cal and his “wasted talent”.  It becomes incredibly frustrating for “normal” fans like me who have the sense to recognize that Kentucky has never been more dominant in the modern era over a 7-year span and probably never will be more dominant in a 7-year span to have to listen to garbage ideas like John Calipari has somehow “wasted” talent at Kentucky.  Does John Calipari have teams that could have won national titles and didn’t?  Of course he does.  The 2010 and 2015 teams were clearly the best teams at the end of the year.  But guess what?  THAT’S SPORTS!

Trust me, Bill Self has a bunch more teams over these 7 years, and many years before that, that should have gone much further in the NCAA Tournament than they did.  Self has won the Big 12 for 11 consecutive years and has turned that into 2 Final Fours and 1 title.  In 11 years!  Don’t give me the crap about underachieving and don’t mention Self.  Imagine if we had won a decade of SEC titles and gone to 2 Final Fours.  Cal has been to FOUR!  In 7 years.  And won the same amount of titles.

And I think of all the perceptions of Cal that are way off one can be completely disproved by a stat above and that is losses to lower seeded teams.  In theory, these are upsets.  Cal has had 2 such losses.  Every other coach there has at least 3 except for Roy Williams and he if loses this weekend, that will give him three.  Bill Self has SIX in the last 7 years.  Cal has lost some tough games but he generally loses to teams at the same seed line or better.

If you want to complain about the Calipari “shtick” or his emphasis on the NBA Draft over college, fine.  But for people to act like the results on the court have not been good enough, you need a brain scan.  The results on the court have been the best in this country for 7 years and are in the running for the best in school history.  If that still makes you complain, then go find an empty room and scream at the walls and let the rest of us enjoy this historic run of basketball.