CRAWFORD | An NCAA upset victim again, Calipari's star is dimming quickly at Kentucky | Sports

LOUISVILLE, Ky. (WDRB) – You could tell it from listening to him. John Calipari, despite all the time he has spent at Kentucky, the heights he has scaled and the adulation he has enjoyed, does not realize the damage done by a second first-round NCAA Tournament loss in three years.

He doesn’t understand the emotion that will sweep through the fan base. He doesn’t understand the level of frustration, not with the program, not with the players, but with him.

Kentucky used to be feared. Now it is some county fair version of Goliath, felled by stones cast by Saint Peters and Oakland and any number of overmatched Davids.

Calipari calmly explains what went wrong. He might even have valid points. But he doesn’t understand that his explanations only make many fans angrier. March Madness, the NCAA Tournament, is a state holiday in Kentucky. Teachers roll TVs into schoolrooms to watch afternoon games. This is a time of year like no other.

And for five years, it has been all but canceled. It has left fans empty. And Calipari gets up on a podium at the NCAA Tournament in Pittsburgh and talks about the percentage of his scholarship players who have been drafted and the billions (“with a B!”) in NBA contracts they have signed and it’s all well and good.

That doesn’t much help nearly 10,000 fans who spent a sacrificial amount of money to drive to Pittsburgh to watch a Kentucky team with seven NBA players look as tight as some old Kentucky teams under Joe B. Hall, and in the end be shot out of the gym by a former Division II player who played the game with joy and passion and made 10 three pointers.

Those old Kentucky teams were accused of playing without joy. Their celebrations came after championships. One of them, Jack Givens, was on the Kentucky radio broadcast, and threw his headset after a point-blank missed layup Thursday. These Kentucky teams have plenty of fun during the season. But in March, they exit solemnly, shuffling out of a devastated locker room like the one Thursday night in Pittsburgh.

Here's the problem. In this day and age, when things go south, it’s tough to retrieve them. This is the age of social media and negativity like we’ve never seen. In spite of that, Kentucky’s fan base loves Reed Sheppard and Rob Dillingham and Antonio Reeves, DJ Wagner and all those guys. They loved Oscar Tshiebwe. They love the players.

But in the end, the players aren’t enough. Not to win as a team. Not to understand their assignments. Not to be the aggressors against an overmatched opponent in an NCAA Tournament game.

Calipari is paid $10 million per year for winning lots of games and making Kentucky the self-proclaimed “gold standard.” And in the past, after disappointing losses, he could point to great incoming recruits and the fan base could rally around him.

Now, even that has gone. Raise your hand if you think the talented class Calipari has coming next season will fare any better than the one that just finished it season?

On Thursday, Calipari talked briefly about next season. He said he likes the team’s new offensive style. And he lamented that the college game “has changed on us.” Teams have gotten older while his teams have stayed younger.

Even so, I’m not sure he understands the shadow that this leaves across the mountains and valleys and towns of Kentucky. People don’t have to win every championship. But they would like to be competitive. They would like to have the hope of winning.

And they’re not going to much longer tolerate being told how great everything is – except for the winning in the postseason part.

Calipari is a great coach, who has won more NCAA Tournament games than any other active coach (57). But a day is coming faster than he realizes that he might be best served by making the decision Tubby Smith once made, that his legacy at Kentucky was too valuable to keep damaging. Smith made the decision to leave on his terms and enjoy the affection of Kentucky fans forever after.

One more year like this, and Calipari might consider the same thing. In reality, perhaps he should think about it now.

He's still at the top of his game as a recruiter and marketer and basketball visionary. But the game has changed. And at Kentucky, you still have to win. You don’t have to win them all, but you can’t lose them all. And since losing in the Elite Eight in the 2019 NCAA Tournament, he’s come too darn close to that in the games that matter most.