Cal's Grade for the 10 years

[Wildcats1st]

Here’s the thing. There are 351 D1 programs. We’ve had the best results since a Calipari has been here. If he’s not an A+, who is? Let’s say your a miserable person who is never satisfied and applies different standards to other programs than you do UK, and you want to put K and maybe Wright ahead of him. Wright hasn’t gotten out of the opening weekend 8 of those 10 years, but whatever. So that’s 2. Maybe throw in Roy, say you want to give him credit for the two titles he got that are outside the relevant time frame. Maybe you just like baby blue, whatever again. That’s 3. So Cal is in 4th place - out of 350.

How many As do you give, anyway, only one or two out of hundreds?

352 college coaches not at UK. Quit down playing the name on the front of the jersey to boost the Calipari brand

 

[bcox13]

It’s an A because.

Most wins in decade
Most tournament wins
Most final fours
Most elite 8’s
Most sweet 16’s
Second most conference titles (Kansas)
Second most titles (Vill, Duke)
Most draft picks
Most lottery picks

If that’s a B then damn this is harder than I thought.

Yep if that’s not an A, I don’t know that we’ll ever have one

 

[Bluegrassking]

I'll take another decade like this one but would love a an extra ring or two or ten.

 

[Mojocat_rivals48469]

352 college coaches not at UK. Quit down playing the name on the front of the jersey to boost the Calipari brand

Is that how you graded your students? If a smart kid got a 96 on a test, and one academically challenged got an 82, did you give the first kid a worse grade?

 

[Wildcats1st]

Is that how you graded your students? If a smart kid got a 96 on a test, and one academically challenged got an 82, did you give the first kid a worse grade?

Nah man I taught primarily AP courses. All had the highest standards/expectations. I taught to the highest level kid and differentiated down. if I had a blended class certainly everyone was held to the same standard then differentiated for based on aptitude and other factors. Same here with cal though there’s no differentiating down for him bc he’s at the all time greatest program so he’s held to the highest of standards which he set mind you.

 

[Rideordiewildcat]

Easy A. The dude has made the last 10 years as exciting as I think any fanbase can hope for. People wanted Barnes a month ago LOL.

 

[UKWildcatT]

First 5 years - A+
Last 5 years - B
Overall - A/A-

What I’d say

 

[Chris Mallory]

If Cal doesn’t get an A, who does? Lebron James, doesn’t win the title every year. He’s still considered by many to be the best of all time. Pete Rose, greatest hitter of all time, yet he failed at the plate 70% of the time.

 

[sam_o]

it's an obvious A

 

[BBallin23]

C, last four years have muddied it up

 

[thebluestripes]

Until he decides to quit under valuing free throw practice, he will only get a "b" from me

 

[WildMoon]

Perfect score is what he did plus one more title...

But obviously not perfect score but still an freaking A.

Anyone scoring anything other than that is borderline dumb .

If we had any other coaches we we're in Jeopardy of losing some of our ranking .

 

[kevcat]

Overall, I would give him a A-

The first 6 years would be an A. It would have been an A+ if not for the NIT season.

The last four would be a B. We have lost 2 years in a row to teams seeded below us, so I think a B is a very favorable grade for this stretch.

 

[TBCat]

I don't know really because his tenure has kind of been Jekyll and Hyde. He gets an obvious A+ for the first 5 years. He had only one rough season. The rest of the time we were in the Final four. Including some teams we didn't expect to be. The next 5 years I would have to give him a D-. Only one true title contender and that was the 2015 team. The other 4 teams during that span had boat loads of talent that just never meshed, never developed and flamed out. Twice we were give as beaten down a path to the Final Four as you will ever see and both times failed. We also started seeing the development of roster chaos that seems to now be a mainstay. We've also seen a change in attitude in some of the players. Even though we had One and Dones the first few years like Wall and Cousins those guys still felt like they were fierce UK players through and through. Now we have one and dones that look at the school as a 6 month pit stop.

Overall score I would have to give him a B-. It's hard to argue with 4 Final Fours and a title, however I can't give an A because it feels like it's tailing off big time. It also seems that Cal has had some developments that just seem incompatible with championships. We are starting to become Bill Self's Kansas team. A team loaded with talent but only comes so close and no closer.

 

[rabidcatfan]

Definitely an A. I'm not sure why there are people grading him less than that? I remember when Pitino was still a well regarded coach here. In 8 seasons he took UK to 4 Elite Eights, 3 Final Fours, and was 1-1 in National Championship games and you'd have thought he could walk on water.

In 10 years, Cal has been to 7 Elite Eights, 4 Final Fours, and is 1-1 in National Championship games and there are people ready to run him off???? Are you serious?? He also has had five 30+ win seasons at UK compared to Pitino's three.

The fact of the matter is that we've gotten so incredibly spoiled as a fanbase that we cant see the big picture. We endured 12 years of up and down basketball, and 4 years of utter mediocrity before Cal. That can still happen after Cal is gone. There was a time we weren't even sure wed be making the tournament, let alone a trip to Final Four. Remember OTS last two seasons and the dismal BCG experiment??

 

[saxonburgcat]

You're just as delusional if you are going to equate Smith and Gillispie.

Sometimes I have to repeat this. During Smith's ten-year tenure Kentucky...
...won an NCAA Title
...won five SEC regular season titles
...won five SEC tournament titles
...had the first ever sweep of the SEC including the tournament
...had a winning record against every other SEC team and OOC rivals Louisville, Indiana and North Carolina
...any many people probably don't realize this one, but during the 2005 season, after 7-1/2 years under Smith, Kentucky achieved the highest all-time winning
percentage it has ever had, .7671. (In other words, Smith successfully built on the all time wins/pct legacy Rupp, Hall and Pitino left and pushed it even higher- hard to include Sutton in there, but you could). Even ten years under Calipari hasn't fully recovered from the Gillispie debacle (though one more year ought to do it)

The ENTIRE issue that we have with Tubby is really post-season. His regular season results were great overall. I still remember people saying that the E8 was the same as the FF, which is stupid but that is how they justified Tubby's lack of success. Using the E8 as a standard, Cal has 7 and Tubby had 4, but 2 of those were in his first two years. After that, it was 2 out of 8 seasons.

 

[Westhoff20]

And yet you all still complained to fire Tubby. Please! I will take Cal’s run over anyone’s period and to be frank so would you !!!!!

*I* didn't "complain to fire Tubby". I was one of his biggest supporters. I realized that his performance was consistent with Kentucky's long-term level of success, going back to the '40s. I was just pointing out that Smith is much much further ahead of Gillispie than Calipari is beyond Smith. Smith and Gillispie should never be considered even relative equals.

And we're on the same side here. People are nuts to complain about Calipari, if you told them 10 years ago this was the level of success he would bring, every single person complaining now would have jumped on it in a heartbeat.

There is a contingent of fans on here who think the extreme pinnacles of success here, ie 1948-1953, 1994-1998, 2010-2014, should be the common level of performance, seemingly not realizing that those years represent only 15 years out of 80 years of NCAA tournament history. They're destined to be disappointed more often than not.

Agreed!!!

 

[BBallin23]

Cal is great but if he’s great you have to admit tubby was too. When all said and done, both have only 1 title which is all that matters. The thing that’s worrisome, is that he’s not getting better with time. All his success came in first half. I get that he has four final fours but what has he done lately. I think that’s what made Pitino great. He started out slow but continued to get better and better. Coaches like Tubby, Cal and Ollie had great success early on, then it ends up derailing. Life time contract was stupid IMO.

 

[efudexto]

The only complaint is leaving so many on the table...we have lost in the tourney to inferior teams to often....almost an A, so I will go B. I think he wins at least one more title as UK coach however and will gladly sign him up for life

 

[Gocats1954]

I give him an A. So hard to win championships. He has us in the hunt almost every year.

 

[KYFOSSIL]

352 college coaches not at UK. Quit down playing the name on the front of the jersey to boost the Calipari brand

Why don’t you quit with your anti-Coach Cal agenda. You and Zaytoven truly despise him as an individual it’s not for the good of the program because if you thought it was for the good of the program you will see how successful Kentucky has been.

 

[bluedog79]

well by looking at the results i'll tell you like Vince McMahon says it:
[eyeroll]Coach Cal your a B+ player.

 

[plumdog69]

A. Easiest question ever.

 

[Myotis]

The ENTIRE issue that we have with Tubby is really post-season. His regular season results were great overall. I still remember people saying that the E8 was the same as the FF, which is stupid but that is how they justified Tubby's lack of success. Using the E8 as a standard, Cal has 7 and Tubby had 4, but 2 of those were in his first two years. After that, it was 2 out of 8 seasons.

I never said an E8 is equal to a FF, but did maintain the difference is smaller than the hype would suggest.

Tubby's 1 title in 10 years is the same as Cal's and equal to UK's long term average. Tubby's last two years really seem to overshadow his career for lots of fans. But most coaches, if they last long enough, have down periods. Grant me that the best team doesn't always win, and one off night or career night by an opponent can end an otherwise promising season in single elimination. Smith's Cat's finished ranked in single digits in the final AP poll 6 years of his first 8, so they were almost always regarded as a threat to win it all.

Until Cal outdid it by 1, Smith had the longest streak of wins against ranked teams (11) in UK history. Cal broke it with 12 in a row from 3/23/2013 to 3/28/2015. Tubby and Cal are the only two coaches in UK history with double digit win streaks against ranked opponents, and both have two. 11 and 10 games for Smith, 12 and 10 for Cal. After 7-1/2 years under Smith, the Cat's had the highest all-time winning percentage they've ever had, although with a very good season next year, that record might get surpassed (.7671 pct all-time). To claim that Smith is a poor coach - which many on here do - is simply wrong.

One thing Cal did that Tubby didn't do - although Smith only had two chances to do it - was take an unranked team (2014, unranked in the final poll) to the championship game. That might well have been the real high point of Cal's coaching prowess.

 

[KyCPA2000]

With all of the elite talent Cal had the first several years, he needed that second title. Not getting that elite of the elite talent like he was. That is why we can no longer break through the final four. Have to have someone who can take over a game when the rest are struggling.

 

[ABlockalypseBrow]

Nothing unfair about not giving him an A. In his own words he’s here to chase UCLA’s 11 championships. By his own measure, we’re closer to being caught than catching up in the title count. It’s as simple as that: B+

 

[ABlockalypseBrow]

It’s an A because.

Most wins in decade
Most tournament wins
Most final fours
Most elite 8’s
Most sweet 16’s
Second most conference titles (Kansas)
Second most titles (Vill, Duke)
Most draft picks
Most lottery picks

If that’s a B then damn this is harder than I thought.

You and I both know he’s here to win titles and the rest of that stuff is a byproduct. Was anyone counting Tubbys conference titles or elite 8s while he was here? If he was first in that, we’d all be giving him an A, and we all know it.

 

[kybassfan]

uh, there was a title in 1998. But you did leave out 1959 to 1977. Or is Rupp sacrosanct?

Perhaps a better way to put this into perspective is to remind them that from 1959 to 1995 - 37 years - there was only one title.

Nobody remembers that time frame. I lived through it. The Cal years have been amazing. Seems as though there is always hope of some sort. There were many times over that period where we would have killed to have this years team.

 

[morgousky]

You and I both know he’s here to win titles and the rest of that stuff is a byproduct. Was anyone counting Tubbys conference titles or elite 8s while he was here? If he was first in that, we’d all be giving him an A, and we all know it.

The problem is I’m comparing it against guys like coach K, who is supposedly the goat of the modern era. Well, Cal just owned him in every statistical measure except 1 game for an extra title. I can’t see how that’s not an A.

Only Jay Wright(lol) and K could possibly be an A with that standard. They combine for 4 final fours in 15 years. Eehhhh.

We’ve outpaced everyone, and Cal could easily win that second title in the next 2-4 years while they go into retirement.

I get that titles matter most, but it doesn’t mean the rest is irrelevant. The list is the list for a reason.

 

[saxonburgcat]

Smith's Cat's finished ranked in single digits in the final AP poll 6 years of his first 8, so they were almost always regarded as a threat to win it all.

To claim that Smith is a poor coach - which many on here do - is simply wrong

My point again was that the biggest problem many of us had with Tubby was the fact that he could not get his teams far enough in the tournament. His regular season success was great but many of us didn't believe that even his better teams could go that far in the tournament. His post-season success continued to suffer after he left UK. I find it interesting that some on this board went bat crazy about how he had taken a dump program like Texas Tech and made them successful. But, let's be honest, Tubby would never have gotten TT to a FF.

 

[TFCat11]

C, last four years have muddied it up

With Cal’s LT Contract (look for K to follow lol), I envision a renewed energy (if that’s possible), and ultimately seeing Cal being CEO, and Brad Stevens being COO!

 

[Col. Angus]

Has to be an A. How is this even a question? Only reason it's not an A+ is because he never got that 2nd title when he really probably should've had 4 of em.

 

[Crawfords Corner]

If Coach Cal's grade is a B, then who gets an A? Jay Wright? Self? K? Roy? Boehein? Izzo?