This is Kentucky.
Perhaps what I dislike most about a coach turning in a subpar performance is the rationalizing that goes with it.
Here is the bottom line
When a coach accepts the job at Kentucky, he knows what he is walking into. Look at what it did to Sutton and Gillispie. The job is demanding, there are no mulligans.
Cal has an innovated approach to coaching and wants to implement it here...great. When it works he is royalty.
Covid-19? Nobody cares. They are still ranking teams, there are teams that are still winning and one of them will win the national championship. Cal is the coach of Kentucky. His job, without excuse, is to have this team winning.
Rampant cheating? Nobody cares. He made the decision to go all in with his approach, he knew players were being paid and he still chose to go the path of high risk/low reward as opposing to changing. Cal is the coach of Kentucky. His job, without excuse, is to have this team winning.
Most final fours in this decade? Most SEC tourney whatever? He doesn't get paid for what happened 8 years ago, 5 years ago or 3 years ago. Nobody cares. Cal is the coach of Kentucky. His job, without excuse, is to have this team winning.
Welcome to Kentucky. It bought your beachfront home in New Jersey. Its given you a chance to change your reputation as a coach. Its given you a platform to define your legacy. Nobody cares. Cal is the coach of Kentucky. His job, without excuse, is to have this team winning.
You can never, as the coach of Kentucky, have a historically bad season and reach new lows.
He does deserve another year. But another year of him insulting fans, declaring to the press he is willing to lose games for a kid's ego along with incompetent managing of this program and I will celebrate him leaving. As far as I am concerned, he has no more sub standard years until he puts in another run like 2009 - 2015. The threshold for sub standard to me, and I think most reasonable fans, is sweet 16 and double digit losses. If you can't rise above that mark in 2 years then your coaching skillsets have diminished and you have no business being the coach of Kentucky. Before anyone start to tell me about other HOF coaches who had consecutive bad years, please go back and re-read the italicized recurring phrase in this post.
Unconditional support for a coach at Kentucky is fallacy. "You people are crazy" - John Calipari
Bump