Scoot McGroot wrote:Atlanta Hawk Fan wrote:Scoot McGroot wrote:Say what you will, but UK WILL end up vacating a Final Four under the Calipari reign.
What makes them different from UMass and Memphis? The name? Sure. The history? Wait.....the history of being punished by the NCAA for rules violation? This could be much worse for UK than it was for either of UMass or Memphis.
Tell me the difference between what happened at Memphis under Calipari with Rose and what happened at Duke under Coach K with Maggette (other than the NCAA's inconsistent treatment of the two incidents, of course, which is likely tied to school history and politics).
What came out in public? Not a whole lot. However, Calipari already had a Final Four vacated once, and now has a second one. Coach K has never had a Final Four vacated.
My point exactly. What was the difference? Both had players who were ineligible. One player cheated on his SAT the other took money from an agent. One team had their Final Four season vacated, one went completely unpunished. The NCAA found in both cases there was nothing the school did wrong and nothing they could have done differently with proper precautions.
Don't tell me it doesn't worry you just a little bit that UK, with it's Eddie Sutton era in the 80's not too far back, has hired Calipari, a guy who has had to vacate his 2 Final Four appearances? Not a bit?
Sutton was a drunk and the money that was sent there was completely out of line. He and his coaches were out of line and could have done a lot differently.
Calipari recruits top players. Top players get greedy people around them and do things that get themselves into trouble. The coaches who sign the Reggie Bushes and Corey Maggettes of the world get free passes when that stuff goes wrong, being at high profile schools. The fact that they don't end up punished like Memphis or UMass is pure luck.
What happened at UMass with Calipari is exactly what happened at Duke with Maggette. Both took money from agents without any fault or involvement of the school. One punished, the other not.
I do fear that any coach recruiting high profile players will get into trouble at some point because agents, parents, etc. hope these guys are just a few years away from being millionaires and they want to promote and exploit them.
I don't have any more particularized concern about Calipari than I do about Coach K, though.
I mean, I'm a Hoosier fan, and it worried me quite a bit when we hired Sampson. Maybe that's the reason I'd be a little skittish. We just got burned for it. I'm not sure that Calipari is any different from Sampson, but he just may be better at what he does than Sampson was.
Calipari has not been accused of doing anything wrong with the Rose/Camby situations. Sampson did a ton of stuff blatantly wrong -- doing things he knew he shouldn't have been doing but choosing to do them anyway.
I see them as two very different situations.
Not a bad start for John Wall. Kudos to Miami, Ohio though. Nick Winbush was incredible.
