Kentucky is lapping rest of league at SEC Tournament under John Calipari

Before the arrival of John Calipari following the 2009 season, Kentucky basketball was going through a bit of a rough patch.

The Wildcats hadn’t made it to the second weekend of the NCAA Tournament since 2005, but most notably, Kentucky’s dominance in the SEC Tournament had all but disappeared.

After Chuck Hayes beat LSU with a last-second bucket in the semifinal round of 2005, Kentucky would go 4-5 in their next nine games at the SEC Tournament. In three of the next four seasons, the Wildcats would not earn a first-round bye and only once advanced to the semifinals. After losing to LSU in 2009, the administration decided to fire Billy Gillispie shortly after the season.

Since that moment, John Calipari has taken over and is 364-99 (173-54) as his 13th season at Kentucky begins to wind down. Under his watch, the Wildcats have won five outright regular-season SEC titles, advanced to seven Elite Eights, and brought home a national championship in 2012.

However, the most dominant performances have come at the SEC Tournament where the Wildcats have won six postseason titles with Calipari roaming the sidelines.

Pure domination

To simply understand how dominant things have been, you need to digest the data. Since Calipari arrived, only three other teams have winning records in the SEC Tournament with none being more than four games above.500.

• Florida (14-10): 1 title, 2 runner-up finishes, 10-5 record under Billy Donovan
• Alabama (13-10): 1 title, 5 semifinal appearances
• Tennessee (13-11): 2 runner-up finishes, zero titles, 1-1 record against Kentucky
• Vanderbilt (11-11): 1 title, 2-0 record against Kentucky
• Georgia (11-11): Zero championship appearances
• Ole Miss (9-11): 1 title
• Auburn (7-9): 1 title, 7-4 record under Bruce Pearl
• Arkansas (8-11): 2 runner-up finishes
• Mississippi State (8-11): 1 runner-up finish
• Missouri (4-7): Zero semifinal appearances
• LSU (6-11): 1 runner-up finish
• Texas A&M (4-8): 1 runner-up finish
• South Carolina (5-11): Zero semifinal appearances

Meanwhile, Kentucky is an astounding 23-5 during that period with those six titles and two runner-up finishes. In the 11 tournaments, the Wildcats have made it to Semifinal Saturday 9 times and didn’t play in the quarterfinals in just one tournament.

Kentucky has owned the SEC Tournament.

Now it’s time for a return to dominance

Unfortunately, 40 percent of the losses that Calipari has suffered in the SEC Tournament have occurred in consecutive meetings. Kentucky dropped a thriller to Tennessee in the 2019 semifinal meeting between top-10 teams. After a cancellation in 2020, the Wildcats returned to the floor only to lose to Mississippi State in the quarterfinals last year.

When Kentucky takes the floor at Amalie Arena on Friday night, UK will be looking to stop a two-game losing streak. That has only occurred once before when Kentucky dropped the championship game in 2012 to Vanderbilt and turned around the next year to lose to that same Vanderbilt team in 2013 on Friday evening.

The Wildcats snapped that snide by tweaking in Atlanta on their way to consecutive victories against LSU and Georgia at the Georgia Dome before taking No. 1 Florida to the wire.

Kentucky will attempt to go another deep run in Tampa this weekend as the program attempts to continue its juggernaut ways at the SEC Tournament.