ESPN details pressure on John Calipari, Kentucky ahead of NCAA Tournament

It’s the biggest NCAA Tournament of John Calipari’s 14-year career at Kentucky, and it’s really not close. The Wildcats are coming off a historic opening-round upset loss to No. 15 seed Saint Peter’s in 2021-22, which followed a 9-16 season overall — arguably the worst in program history — in 2020-21. Factor in the canceled 2019-20 postseason, one UK entered as a No. 1 seed in the SEC Tournament before the world shut down, and it’s been four years since fans have seen a single win in the Big Dance.

And then this year, the can has been kicked time and time again leading up to this point. Early-season struggles? Injuries. Mid-season struggles? Finding an identity and building chemistry. Late-season struggles? More injuries. Early SEC Tournament exit? Eh, the next one is all that matters.

Calipari warned from day one that it would take a minute for this team to take off, but promised it’d all come together eventually.

“I’ve said all along we were going to break through,” the UK head coach said in late February.

All of the adversities were for this moment, the NCAA Tournament. This point on, nothing that happened during the regular season or conference tournament matters. Everybody in college basketball has a clean slate. Now, it’s about stringing together six straight wins.”

“The greatest thing: everyone is 0-0. It’s a new season, new excitement,” Calipari said during his call-in radio show Monday evening. “Whatever happened in the season, good and bad, use it as fuel. Let’s go.”

That mindset is a blessing and a curse, especially at Kentucky. It’s refreshing to be able to throw away MIchigan State and Gonzaga and UCLA and Missouri and Alabama and South Carolina and Kansas and Arkansas and Georgia and Vanderbilt and Vanderbilt again (phew, that’s a lot of ands).

But it also puts the weight of the world on this team and Calipari personally to get the job done in this tournament, no exceptions or excuses. The team is healthy enough, there’s plenty of talent, they learned to overcome adversity and move past losses, fight for victories, stack strong performances on top of one another. The “wait till March” crutch is gone and the IOUs are due.

And my God, is that a lot of pressure.

ESPN’s Myron Medcalf examined that pressure ahead of Kentucky’s March Madness run, interviewing some of the individuals who understand it best: Rick Pitino, Ramel Bradley, Rex Chapman, Jeff Sheppard, Goose Givens and Ryan Lemond — yes, that Ryan Lemond.

“If Kentucky suffers another upset in the NCAA tournament, the chatter about life without Calipari will return, for better or worse,” Medcalf wrote.

The columnist stressed that the in-season tension was lifted when it became clear the Wildcats were in the field as an at-large team — it didn’t look that way following the road loss at Georgia. Then Senior Night happened, then a one-and-done adventure in the SEC Tournament down in Nashville. Highs and lows on a game-by-game basis.

Now, it all comes down to this event, starting this weekend.

“This could all descend into chaos again if Kentucky gets bounced early in the NCAA tournament for a second year in a row,” he wrote. “Every coach in the NCAA tournament feels that pressure. The head coach of Kentucky’s program, however, endures a level of scrutiny no other men’s basketball coach in America faces. Because he’s not just a coach. He’s closer to royalty in these parts. But that crown comes with a cost.”

Rex Chapman once laughed in Eddie Sutton’s face at the idea Kentucky was playing for SEC Tournament championships, using five rings he had won at Arkansas as a motivation tactic.

“I started to laugh because I thought it was a joke,” Chapman told Medcalf. “I was like, ‘No, we play for Final Fours at Kentucky, and anything else is a disappointment.'”

All-American Wildcat Jack “Goose” Givens, now a radio analyst with the UK Sports Network, echoed the same message.

“I think Kentucky basketball is like a religion in the state,” Givens added. “I can get fan mail from a kid who is 8 years old or a woman who is 80 years old. It affects them the same.”

Fast forward a few decades to Ramel Bradley’s time in Lexington during the mid-2000s, playing for Tubby Smith and Billy Gillispie. He saw both good and bad, having kids and dogs named after him during the good, but also beaten down for the losses and individual mistakes he was a part of as a Wildcat.

“It’s like the Yankees or the Knicks. It’s just embedded in the culture. It’s wild, man,” Bradley said. “… It can be like a blanket of depression over your shoulders because it feels great when you know everybody in the state shuts down everything to watch you play. But when you don’t win a game or you make mistakes on the court, that carries over into your regular life. … It puts you in a place to become a grown man very fast.”

KSR’s own Ryan Lemond has seen it from the media side of things.

“I’m getting messages that say, ‘Fire Calipari,'” Lemond said in the interview with ESPN. “There have been a lot of critical comments. They have to win in the first round. They absolutely have to win the first round.”

No one, though, has experienced the love and wrath of Big Blue Nation more than Rick Pitino, a man who was idolized during his time at Kentucky and absolutely despised at Louisville.

“The roller coaster that a lot of us go through is magnified at Kentucky,” Pitino said. “It’s always much worse than it really is and it’s always much better than it really is. It’s always exaggerated.”

The highs, as Calipari has experienced, were high. “I always called it ‘Camelot’ because for eight years I got treated so well,” Pitino said. “… I didn’t have a bad day at Kentucky.” He handled the pressure by putting on a smile as he shook hands and took pictures. “I just embraced it,” he added.

But he’s also seen the other side.

“After eight years, it was time to go,” Pitino said. “… Anytime you stay at a place like [Calipari] or me at Louisville, you’re going to have your ups and downs because you stay so long.”

Now closing out year 14 in Lexington at some point in the coming weeks (or days), Calipari has never had more pressure on his shoulders to make a run. Will that pressure make diamonds or burst the program’s pipes?

Medcalf lays it all out on the line with ESPN, plenty of other interviews and context in a must-read feature on the Wildcats. Read it in its entirety right here.