John Calipari is usually a very forward-thinker but his latest idea might be a little too forward.
The Kentucky Wildcats coach was speaking with reporters at SEC spring meetings on Wednesday when he proposed moving the season-ending SEC Basketball Tournament to the beginning of the regular season.
“Let’s not have a postseason tournament,” Calipari added. “Let’s have a preseason tournament where you’re guaranteed three games. We go somewhere and all the fans come in and we celebrate our league. We’ll have great games to start the year, and we’ll do it prior to the year.”
Calipari’s disdain for the league tournament seems to stem from this past year when Kentucky defeated Texas A&M to win the conference crown but was given a four-seed in the NCAA Tournament while the Aggies earned a three-seed.
“If you win the conference tournament, it doesn’t mean anything,” he added. “It doesn’t move the needle.”
So let’s dig into this, shall we?
Perhaps Calipari has a point in terms of what happened last season for Kentucky, but for just about any other school in the SEC, winning the SEC Tournament would have been a boon. It would have put a sizable chunk of the conference’s teams into the NCAA Tournament and probably would have improved the seed of everyone else.
What of the years when a team like Kentucky needed to win the SEC Tournament in order to ensure that they’d make the NCAAs? Calipari’s concerns are strictly his own. And quite frankly, if Kentucky wanted a better seed, they should have won more games during the season.
Starting the regular season with a conference tournament certainly sounds interesting and would generate tons of coverage. But how do you seed it? Does Calipari still like the idea if Kentucky has to open against Texas A&M instead of, say, Missouri? Or will he complain when Kentucky has to play Missouri instead of an SEC squad that helps his team’s RPI?
If it’s that important to him, Calipari should just schedule tougher out of conference to start the year. Kentucky played some solid early-season games this past year against Duke, Louisville and UCLA, but it could schedule even harder if it wanted to.
Ultimately, NCAA seeding is a bit of a crapshoot anyway. Once you get into the second round it’s negligible. While he’s over here complaining about getting a four-seed, a ten-seed went to the Final Four this year.
While it does sound like a cool gimmick on paper, it’s ultimately an empty gesture based on one coach’s sour grapes over spilled milk. Get over it, Cal.
[ESPN]
