John Calipari Needs this Championship in the Worst Way
Posted on March 27, 2012 by Jacob Bunn
When Kentucky head basketball coach John Calipari took the job over three years ago, it gave long-suffering Kentucky fans optimism that the drought could be coming to an end. The Wildcats have not won the NCAA men's basketball championship since 1998. For some schools, a shot at a national title is a once-in-a half-century proposition. For Kentucky, it is expected to be a regular occurrence.
If the Wildcats finish with a win, Calipari will join Adolph Rupp, Joe B. Hall, Rick Pitino, and Tubby Smith as national championship-winning Kentucky head coaches. For Calipari, though, there is more at stake. He has taken the Wildcats to the Elite Eight each of the three years he has been in Lexington, and he has now taken two of those teams to the Final Four.
The rap on Calipari throughout the last several years has been his inability to win the national championship. Before becoming the Kentucky head coach, he took Memphis all the way to the national championship game, where his team was defeated by Kansas.
With superstars like Anthony Davis and Michael Kidd-Gilchrist on this year’s team, many believe this is the best shot Kentucky has had to win it all in years. In fact, if the Wildcats cannot pull off the championship this year, one has to wonder when a Calipari-coached team will do it.
The road to the championship has been paved beautifully for Kentucky. After a season in which the only loss came at the hands of Indiana, Kentucky played Western Kentucky to open its NCAA Tournament run. In the Sweet Sixteen, Kentucky was re-matched with Indiana (this time the Wildcats were the victors). And, in the opening round of the Final Four, Kentucky will be playing in-state rival Louisville, which is coached by former Kentucky national championship-winning coach Rick Pitino.
There is more than a ton on the line for the 2011-12 Kentucky basketball team. Center Anthony Davis has been nominated for, or won, every major college basketball award that I know of, and every bit of his game has backed up such accolades. For Calipari, it is a chance to finally remove the charge of not being able to go the distance in the NCAA Tournament. It is an opportunity for ‘Big Blue’ to be back on top of the college basketball world.
UCLA holds the NCAA record for most national championships in basketball with eleven. Kentucky is right behind with seven. Over the next week, this already historic Kentucky team has a chance to do something Wildcat fans have been dreaming of for fourteen years – turn seven into eight.
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Email Jacob at jacob@bunnsports.com and follow him on Twitter at @JacobBunn
