Joe’s Notes: The Real Problem for John Calipari

From Sean Vinsel at Hoops Insight:

Tonight UK scored 37 pts in 29 possessions with Reed/Rob/Reeves (1.27 per)

Without all 3 they scored 39 pts in 40 possessions (0.98 per)

Just never were willing to build a plan around those 3 weapons.

Kentucky lost to Oakland last night, falling to a team seeded 14^th or worse for the second time in three years, and failing to reach the second weekend of the NCAA Tournament for the fourth season in a row. It’s a frustrating trend, but taken alone, there’d be some validity to the possibility they suffered some really nasty luck.

The problem with that explanation is that Kentucky has problems even if you do write off the tournament as too small to be a meaningful sample. Kentucky wasn’t as good as their seed this year, or last year, or even in the Bracket Matrix implied history applied to 2020. After just one season finishing outside the kenpom top 20 in John Calipari’s first decade in Lexington, the Cats have finished 29^th, 49^th, 6^th, 27^th, and 23^rd the last five years. Four of those are, for a program with Kentucky’s talent and Kentucky’s resources, inexcusable.

Much of the blame in the aftermath has been assigned to college basketball outgrowing Calipari’s approach. Calipari himself leaned into this narrative, talking about freshmen struggling against 24-year-olds. Is there some validity? A little. The one-and-done situation certainly isn’t what it was when Anthony Davis wore Kentucky blue. With alternatives to college basketball common for the first time and NIL diluting Calipari’s recruiting monopoly, a team built of freshmen can’t be as good as it was in 2012 or 2015. Given the struggles have most notably manifested in two prominent high-pressure games, the additional opinion that a lack of experience hurts Kentucky isn’t without merit.

If this is really the whole problem, the fix should be easy. For one thing, college basketball’s going to start getting younger again these next two seasons, with Covid eligibility phasing out. For another, Kentucky is capable of grabbing two or three veterans in the transfer portal. It’s Kentucky. They can be in the mix for anyone they want.

But the problem this year wasn’t Kentucky’s roster. The problem was John Calipari’s approach.

If you average the latest mock drafts from Sam Vecenie and Kevin O’Connor, Kentucky will have 2.5 first round picks in June. They might have as many as four, with Justin Edwards going 28^th in O’Connor’s from Monday and D.J. Wagner going 32^nd in Vecenie’s from February. NBA promise isn’t equivalent to basketball effectiveness, especially in the college game. Many see Cody Williams as the best college prospect in this draft, and Williams, though a good college player, is an accessory for a Colorado team that spent a lot of time this year on the bubble. Even accounting for his injuries, Williams was not a great college basketball player this year. His prospect status comes more from his potential than what he’s shown already.

That’s different with Kentucky’s prospects. Especially with Reed Sheppard. Sheppard’s value doesn’t come from his vertical or his wingspan or his length or lateral quickness. Sheppard has many of those things, and is an athletic freak as much as any NBA prospect. Sheppard’s value, the value which might make him a lottery pick, comes from a combination of polish and awareness beyond what we expect from 22-year-olds, let alone 19-year-olds who were playing in high school games thirteen months ago.

Reed Sheppard didn’t have a good game yesterday. We won’t sugarcoat that. Rob Dillingham, whom we’ll get to in a moment, didn’t have a good game either. Yet as Vinsel pointed out, Kentucky was at its best when playing with its three best guards (as Vinsel later confirmed, the defensive outcome was poorer, but Kentucky still won those segments of the game when Sheppard, Dillingham, and Antonio Reeves were all on the court). Had Sheppard and Dillingham performed better, Kentucky likely would have won. But it still would have been in spite of the problem with how Calipari tried to approach this year. Sheppard, on the season, was Kentucky’s best player, and Calipari did not figure out a way to build around that reality. From EvanMiya:

Kentucky was best this season, mathematically, when Reed Sheppard was playing basketball. Kentucky was also most effective defensively when Sheppard was on the court. But while Sheppard finished second on the Wildcats in possessions, he was not the go-to point guard for this Kentucky team. Boo Buie, for some context, has played 90% of Northwestern’s minutes (credit: kenpom). That’s roughly seven more minutes per game.

The Wildcats had major defensive problems this year, and it didn’t seem Calipari ever punted on those. This is probably why Dillingham, Kentucky’s most effective offensive player, spent so much time on the bench. The hesitancy to use Dillingham may have been overdoing it—Kentucky performed better defensively with Dillingham playing than with Reeves, and it’s possible the fixation on defense was a losing battle whereas committing to outscoring everyone might have been a winning one—but it’s at least an understandable way to approach a large vulnerability. Sheppard, though? There is no good explanation for why John Calipari did not build around the best player on his team. Maybe Sheppard would have still had a bad game last night. Maybe a Sheppard-centric Kentucky would have backfired in this one particular game. You can never entirely eliminate the potential for an upset until you play the game. But Kentucky would probably have been a top-20 team if it played around its top-ten player. The Saint Peter’s and Oakland losses are a small sample. The last five years are not.

Should Kentucky move on from Calipari? I personally lean towards yes. It’s not necessarily an easy job—it’s a lot more political than other roles—but the resources at Kentucky are immense. In this new world of college sports in which the Big Ten and SEC are growing more and more powerful, Kentucky is the only currently competitive blueblood within those two leagues. There are basketball schools in the conferences, most notably Purdue, Michigan State, and Indiana. But Kentucky stands apart from Purdue and Michigan State in the realm of prestige, and Kentucky is a more effective basketball machine right now than Indiana. By a lot. It’s hard to always be in the top ten. Kentucky should always be in the top twenty.

Fixing Replay Review

The errant foul call on A.J. Staton-McCray was not the lone deciding factor in the Samford/Kansas game. It wasn’t even one of those calls that directly determined the end of the game. Samford’s win probability, had it been called a clean block, would have been somewhere vaguely in the area of 60%. Samford’s win probability after the foul call was around 25%. Those are inexact numbers, but it was that kind of swing. It was a very bad time for a bad call, but it did not directly eliminate Samford from the NCAA Tournament.

You can’t legislate every bad call out of basketball. Judgment will always be a part of the system, and even the black and white stuff is impossible to perfectly adjudicate because of the timing of whistles. Paradoxically, a problem in college basketball from a watchability perspective has become refs trying to get too many calls correct, leaning on the monitor as a crutch as they devote themselves wholeheartedly to determining which fingernail touched the basketball last and at what millisecond that ball landed out of bounds. The obsession with the clock is especially maddening, often resulting in free timeouts in instances where the difference of even whole seconds would not impact the outcome of the game.

It is, however, possible to improve this. We’ve advocated for a while now for a time limit on reviews. We’d also support a challenge system. A call like last night’s should have been challengeable.

It’s ok, too, to have different replay rules in different conferences, and different replay rules in the NCAA-sanctioned postseason than in the CBI or the CIT. Division I is a large, diverse beast. Building a system that works given the NEC’s resources shouldn’t limit the outcomes of crucial games. My impression is that the system does indirectly account for this—there are more camera angles available at bigger schools and in bigger games—but if, say, the SEC wants to try a fourth ref/sky judge system? I’d hope the NCAA would allow that.

It was a hell of a play by Staton-McCray. It was also very much a blunder by Nick Timberlake to not pull that ball out and wait to get fouled on the floor.

Etc.

A thought related to each of the other fourteen games yesterday (thoughts on today’s will be included with tomorrow’s probability updates):

• Duquesne over BYU: BYU’s been interesting to us because they are made in the image of a Mountain West team (yes I know they used to be in the MWC) and played a game in which we’d expect Mountain West teams to struggle in this tournament, based on recent history. I think the best explanation for the Mountain West’s struggles comes from it being that conference-wide correlation, as opposed to something that specifically affects the MWC teams from altitude, but it’s a weird and fascinating thing. We’re really guessing at ghosts with it. I do wonder if the early tip played a role for the team from Utah.
• Illinois over Morehead State: Illinois was the closest thing yesterday to a Kentucky style of team, because they play absolutely no defense and are ridiculously good at scoring points. They did struggle early, but obviously their strong second half put the game away. They’re so susceptible against polished teams, but I don’t know how worried they should be about a massive upset. Duquesne is roughly as good as Penn State, but the Penn State loss came in the most pro-Penn State environment, with that game at Rec Hall.
• Michigan State over Mississippi State: We felt good about Michigan State in this one. It was one of the few we felt comfortable betting. But while Michigan State is way better than their seed (this doesn’t mean they didn’t deserve it), the only game of the season which somewhat indicates an ability to beat UNC in Charlotte is the one they won in December, in Detroit, against Baylor. Even that’s a very different game from tomorrow’s.
• UNC over Wagner: Not a lot here. Tar Heels didn’t let it be interesting, so credit to them on that. Playing in Charlotte is an advantage. “Winning” your geographic region in the regular season is a big deal.
• Creighton over Akron: The Big East is on the board! They were going to get on the board, but we had a little Big East hesitancy around that conference correlation idea, and Creighton kept oxygen off that fire. Not amazing in the first half, but still won it by five against a fringe top-100 team.
• Oregon over South Carolina: Holy Jermaine Couisnard. Unbelievable game. When Couisnard and Jackson Shelstad are both cooking, the Ducks are elite offensively. The recipe is there tomorrow for Creighton vs. Oregon to be a riot.
• Arizona over Long Beach State: Yeah, Caleb Love chucking might be a problem for Arizona. Very curious to see how Dayton approaches him specifically on defense tomorrow.
• Dayton over Nevada: What a comeback, and what a disaster for the Wolf Pack. I am also excited to see DaRon Holmes going at Oumar Ballo. Feels like a different world for Holmes, who was fine against Houston in the nonconference season but did carve up some strong defensive Cincinnati bigs.
• Gonzaga over McNeese: I don’t know how much this should be chalked up to Will Wade having one foot out the door. I think a lot of people have looked at Will Wade’s success and forgotten how good of a recruiter he is. The actual coaching part? That’s never been as much of a strength as the recruiting. He isn’t necessarily bad at the coaching, but he also isn’t outstanding at it. Those VCU and LSU teams were all good, not great.
• Iowa State over South Dakota State: The Cyclones were never in too much trouble, which was nice. South Dakota State did shoot the ball well, as we expected they might. Nice to beat a team soundly when they shoot 42% on a high number of threes. Hopefully the good shooting night for ISU translates into a lot of comfort tomorrow with the rims in Omaha.
• Washington State over Drake: Washington State shut down Tucker DeVries and looked perfectly comfortable trailing in the closing minutes. A lot of teams (see: South Carolina) who thrive off close games struggle in March, and Washington State has definitely been the beneficiary of some luck, but they believe they will win and they’re well-coached strategically by Kyle Smith. On the Drake side, DeVries had a great year, but I don’t think people credit Roman Penn enough for last year’s team. DeVries improved a ton this year. Lacking a point guard as good as Penn was tough for this season.
• Texas over Colorado State: Texas didn’t let this get interesting, but they did allow that possibility to enter the room. Terrible shooting day from the Longhorns, who benefitted from an uncharacteristically panicked performance from the Rams. Chendall Weaver has come on so strong as the season’s progressed. He’s a difference-maker, and that’s something this thin Texas team needed.
• Tennessee over Saint Peter’s: We didn’t pick Saint Peter’s or anything (did pick Oakland, not to brag), but we said we believed in their defense, so I would like to issue a correction on that front. A massacre.
• NC State over Texas Tech: NC State’s playing great basketball at a great time, and Texas Tech just couldn’t consistently be the better version of who they are. What a path for NC State from here.