National Media Reacts to Kentucky's NCAA Tournament Exit, "That's a failure"

The Kentucky basketball season is over, the Most Wonderful Time of the Year for the haters. Last year’s loss to Saint Peter’s brought a cavalcade of hot takes from folks who were eagerly awaiting to dance on Kentucky’s grave.

Fast forward a year later, Kentucky is once again done playing basketball before the second weekend of the NCAA Tournament, this time thanks to a loss to Kansas State. What went wrong? What’s next? Some members of the national media weigh in from various angles.

Paul Finebaum: “Kentucky has become irrelevant”

The voice of the SEC is not pulling any punches the morning after the Wildcats’ loss. In his weekly appearance on McElroy and Cubelic in the Morning, Paul Finebaum threw haymakers at John Calipari.

“Kentucky has become irrelevant,” Finebaum said. “We get all excited about them every year, because they’ve got the No. 1 recruiting class coming in, which they do again. In November, they were the No. 4 team in the country. They had to fight to get into the tournament in February, which they did, and then they laid another egg. To the elite college basketball world, getting knocked out in the Round of 32 is a failure.”

Kentucky ended its NCAA Tournament drought with a victory over Providence, but Finebaum believed UK needed to at least join three of its SEC compadres in the Sweet 16 to not consider this season a complete loss.

“I thought just by moving the goalposts or the goals this year with Kentucky, they had to get to the Sweet 16 just to wash away the stench of the last couple years. You had Covid, you had a losing season, then last year losing to Saint Peter’s in round one, which is one of the worst losses. It has some company after this past couple of days, but it’s still one of the worst losses in modern college basketball history. And now this.

“Beating Providence saved the day on Friday from a complete disaster, but there’s no way you can look this season as anything other than a failure. And there’s also no way you can look at John Calipari’s career as saying nothing but the clock is ticking loudly. You can say whatever you want about his record, but it’s been 11 years since his National Championship, it’s been eight years now since a Final Four … and over the last four years this program has one NCAA Tournament win. That’s a failure.”

CBS Sports gives Kentucky (Almost) a Failing Grade

Kyle Boone at CBS Sports handed out grades for every team that played over the weekend. Kentucky was at the bottom of the list for bottoming out in Greensboro.

“A sixth-seeded Kentucky team losing to a third-seeded Kansas State team isn’t terribly egregious. But the loss guaranteed UK’s Sweet 16 drought would extend to three years — the longest of the John Calipari era. It continues an ugly downward trend of the program and puts pressure on Cal, with a top recruiting class incoming, to win and win big next season.”

Jay Bilas has a Theory about UK’s Slide (Link)

Take all of the bad stats and facts out of the equation. It’s clear to anyone who has watched this basketball team over the last 15 years that this version of Kentucky basketball looks different than the one John Calipari deployed in the first half of his tenure.

In an appearance on ESPN’s Get Up, Jay Bilas shared what he believes changed in the Wildcats. John Calipari stayed ahead of the curve with the one-and-done rule. Maybe he tried too hard to do the same with the transfer portal?

“When the transfer portal came in, I think Cal tried to get ahead of what could be the new wave and decided to go into the transfer portal. He doesn’t have the same talent now that he had in 2015 when he had lottery talent that came out of high school. That’s going to change next year. He’s got the No. 1 recruiting class coming in,” said Bilas.

“I haven’t talked to him about it. I’d like to hear whether he agrees with that, maybe he dipped into the portal a little bit too much or too soon. But you can certainly do well in the portal, you just have to make the right decisions. I don’t think anyone would dispute, any reasonable basketball person will tell you Kentucky’s not been quite as talented over the last couple of years as they’ve been in the past with the one-and-done talent.”