Calipari heyday is over after miserable IU loss

Calipari heyday is over after miserable IU loss
21 March 2016

By Dr. David W. Overbey

The 2012 Championship season seems like a long time ago.

Last Saturday's NCAA Tournament loss to longtime border rival Indiana is without question the low point in the John Calipari era and one of the worst losses in UK basketball history.  No doubt this team was not one of Calipari's most talented but the issue here is the woeful performance, specifically the lack of offensive production and three-point shooting.  All season the question-mark for this edition was the frontline, while the backcourt of Tyler Ulis and Jamal Murray was hyped as the best backcourt in college basketball.  Yet, it was that backcourt that floundered when performance mattered the most.

Ulis racked up a lot of points, but didn't get the rest of the team involved the way a highly touted point guard is supposed to.  And Murray had his worst game of the season, a sickening 1-of-9 performance from the three-point line.  The frontline reverted to the lackluster version we saw in UK's ugly losses to bad UCLA, Ohio State, Auburn, and Tennessee teams.  Before I go further with my observations on the status of the UK program, let me point out what I saw going wrong in the seasoning-ending, brick-laying loss to IU.

The disappearance of Derek Willis

UK became a more dynamic offensive team when Calipari finally realized he needed more than two players on the floor who were threats to score and inserted junior Derek Willis into the starting lineup.  Willis answered the call, hitting 44% from three-point range, and knocking down seven three-pointers in a home victory over Tennesssee.  Willis injured his ankle in a road game against Vanderbilt and missed a couple of games.  But he appeared recovered and healthy soon after, hitting a three-pointer to give UK the lead for good in overtime against Texas A&M in the SEC Championship game.

Yet for some reason, Willis was consigned to a reserve role come NCAA tournament time, while Calipari re-inserted the over-hyped and erratic freshman center Skal Labissiere as a starter for the most important part of the season.  Willis did not enter the game against IU until past the midpoint of the first half.  He took only one three-pointer, which he missed, and did not score.

But more importantly, it appeared neither Willis' teammates nor Coach Calipari seemed interested in getting Willis involved in the offensive.  I don't recall a single play where UK was looking to set up Willis for a good look from three--even when it was obvious that IU coach Tom Crean's defensive strategy was to smother Murray, something Calipari should have seen coming.  A big part of Murray's late-season scoring binge, I think, is that he was on the floor with Willis at the same time, giving UK two three-point threats plus a point guard who could score.  Opposing defenses couldn't take the simple strategy of focusing only on Murray, as Willis consistently knocked down open threes.

With his team struggling to score and get untracked from three-point range, the beginning of the second half gave every indication it was going to be UK's last of the season.  Willis began the half on the bench, and Calipari decided that UK would establish Labissiere down-low, a decision that obviously ignored how the two players had performed over the course of the season.  Fittingly, Labissiere missed a close-in shot; IU scored inside; Alex Poythress travelled; and IU hit a three-pointer.  A one-point UK deficit at halftime was now a 38-32 IU lead, and the Hoosiers had control of the game from that point on.  UK did rally with threes by Murray (his only one of the game) and Ulis, followed by a steal and layup by Poythress (his ONLY field goal of the game), but that was UK's last flash of good basketball.

To sum up: with a team that played its best basketball with Willis and Murray in the starting lineup, UK began the second half against IU with Willis on the bench.  With its obvious strength being its backcourt, Calipari's strategy to start the second half was to pound the ball inside with the result being a miss and a turnover, hardly surprising for a team whose frontcourt was never its strength and always inconsistent.

Not having Willis as a main option offensively made zero sense, and his absence as someone to establish offensively was compounded by the pipe-dream that Labissiere was finally going to turn into the all-world player he was touted as being.  These lineup choices ignored how Labissiere and Willis performed.  Labissiere woefully underachieved; meanwhile, when his chance came, Willis played as well if not better than expected.  Labissiere did have a good game agaisnt LSU in UK's regular season finale, but LSU was a woefully underachieving team, and that one-game performance alone should not have outweighed the season-long performance of a player who at best was inconsistent, and at times looked totally over-matched against opponents' big men and clueless about how to play basketball.

UK lacked confidence and energy

A coach cannot control how well his players play.  He can't make the three-pointers go in, or 6'11'' players hit shots within 10 feet of the basket.  But come NCAA tournament time, this UK team did not look confident or play as though it had the mentality it was going to win.  IU is of course a good team, but they were also beatable.  UK played timid, and during stretches of the first half when they had the lead, the Wildcats never showed the energy and consistency that would have given them command of the game.  IU, on the other hand, played with increasing energy and confidence in the second half.  Once it got the lead, IU played as though they knew they were going to beat UK.  I would attribute UK's lack of confidence and energy to the inexplicable absence of Willis as a main offensive factor, and the mounting pressure Murray faced as one three-pointer after another clanged off the rim, and no other offensive presence emerged.

Has John Calipari turned into Tubby Smith?

Discounting the formality of UK's first-round blowout of over-matched Stony Brook in the first round, here are the point totals of UK's last three meaningful NCAA games: 68 in a regional final win over Notre Dame; 64 in the stunning loss to Wisconsin, and 67 in the loss to IU.  Notice that in all three games, UK could not manage to break 70 points.  How has this happened?  When UK faced IU in its 2012 championship run, the final was a 102-90 UK win.  That team could score when it needed to and won a game that was an offensive shootout.  Defense alone does not win championships.  Winning teams shoot the ball well from three-point range, attack the opponent with multiple offensive threats, and score the ball in the games that matter most.  That means NCAA tournament games against opponents who are going to put points on the board.

But even with a roster loaded with NBA lottery picks last year, UK played like a team with modest offensive ability, a team that wanted to slow the game down and win with rebounding and defense, the forlorn style of play that characterized the Tubby Smith era.  Why make it a point to get the very top recruits every year who will go one-and-done to the NBA and then play as though if the score gets into the stratospheric 70s that puts your team at a disadvantage?

Next year is put up or shut up time for Calipari 

I've said before that the knock on Calipari that he can recruit but can't coach is unfair.  And--up until the disastrous loss to Wisconsin in an abrupt end to a dominant, undefeated season--I think Calipari had done an excellent job of coaching, especially in NCAA tournament games.  He won four high-pressure, close games against very good opponents to get UK to the Final Four in 2011.  He had to face arch-rival Louisville and beat them a second time in the Final Four en route to the 2012 NCAA title.  And in 2014, he took a talented but somewhat underachieving team on an impressive run to the NCAA title game--again winning four high-pressure, very close games against very good opponents.  And again he had to beat Louisville for a second time, this time in the regional semi-finals.  But in those three seasons, UK shot the ball well from three-point range and did not play as though a high scoring game was the type of game they wanted to avoid.  Aaron Harrison's clutch three-pointers in the last minute of wins against Louisville, Michigan, and Wisconsin in the 2014 tournament showed why it makes sense to recruit the most talented players in the country and unleash them as an offensive force, not a tentative unit that tightens up when the have the ball.

Maybe this year was destined to be a hangover year for UK after arguably the most disappointing ending to a season in the history of its esteemed basketball program.  But even making that concession, next year there will be no patience for the team if it underachieves and demonstrates a puzzling aversion to playing offense and a three-point attack that at best relies on a single player every game to get hot.  Calipari must take another heralded group of recruits and get them to be an offensive force that can win high scoring games and has the confidence to win when the stakes are highest.

But this year also showed that too much is made of players' hype and reputation before they've played a single college game, let alone faced the pressure of NCAA tournament play.  The group coming in next year is touted as one of Calipari's best classes--a collection of players who are talented and can score, an assortment of really good guards and front line players.  But that was the same reputation this year's team had, and Labissiere in particular showed how reputation and performance can be as far apart as a second-round loss and a spot in the Final Four.

UK teams have a rich history of home-grown players who went under the recruiting radar but turned out to be pivotal contributors to championship teams: Scott Padgett, Cameron Mills, and Anthony Epps all won titles, and Travis Ford lead UK to the 1993 Final Four.  None of those players were All-Universe recruits.  The Pelphrey, Feldhaus, and Farmer trio from 1992 nearly pulled off the biggest upset in NCAA history, were it not for the heart-breaking conclusion to the regional final against Duke.  I bring this up because the one thing all of these players had in common was they could really shoot the three.  They hit clutch threes in NCAA tournament games and always played with the determination and energy that shine on winning teams.  If UK is going to be a fixture in the Final Four for seasons to come, it will need to regain exceptional three-point shooting and offensive proficiency.  Those qualities have been lacking in the last two seasons--a bizarre reality given how deep and talented the 2015 edition was, and a disappointing reality given how obviously over-hyped and undermanned the 2016 team was, especially with a home-grown three-point specialist not getting involved in the offense when the team struggled to score.  

Whatever may be said about Calipari's recruiting and coaching, it doesn't hurt to have players whose forte is to drill three-pointers and score a lot of points.  A day after the IU loss, Kyle Wiltjer, who transferred to Gonzaga from UK after his sophomore year hit more threes against Utah in the first four minutes of the game than UK managed as a team the entire game against IU.  It's no coincidence that Gonzaga is a hot team streaking into the Sweet 16 while UK has nothing to do but talk about how great it will be next year.  We'll see.

Dr. David W. Overbey is co-host of the Modus Operandi podcast and the MoSports podcast along with Alan Miller and the Institute for Psychic Reform Studios.  Dr. Overbey can be reached at badteacher515@gmail.com.