by Kent Sterling
Moments like this against Kentucky are consigned to the dusty bins of history now that Cal has weaseled his way out of the IU vs. UK series.
Kentucky basketball coach John Calipari won a National Championship, and decided to flex his muscles by picking up his ball and going home.
People achieve some success, and they get to decide to stop doing those things they feel are unpleasant, and the prospect of the Wildcats losing at Rupp Arena against a loaded Indiana team was a little bit too much for Calipari to bear.
Kentucky will re-load as always, and barnstorm with their freshmen rentals who enjoy life in Lexington for seven months while awaiting eligibility for the NBA Draft, but Cal’s intractable reluctance to continue a series that has been an annual rite of passage since Rupp dueled Knight for bragging rights will rob those kids of a entertaining challenge.
There used to be a great rivalry between those two states whose basketball traditions outpace all others. The high school all-star series devolved into a farce years ago as youth basketball in Indiana has exploded. The college rivalry languished for years as IU’s signature program withered under the putrid and sinister lack of leadership of Mike Davis and Kelvin Sampson.
Now, as the Hoosiers emerge from their self-induced slumber, John Calipari is content to turn his back on history, and the most challenging opponent on their schedule. There is a word for that – cowardice.
Indiana fans will miss the game because in the midst of a non-conference schedule filled with D-1 bottom feeders, the Kentucky game provided a meaningful test.
Kentucky fans will miss the game because they hate Indiana basketball, and because on many occasions it gave them a chance to blather and crow about their superiority as a basketball program.
Cal robbed the kids of a chance to battle, and the fans of their joy in mocking the Hoosiers.
I’ll miss the fun of pointing out the obvious flaws in the Kentucky way of exploiting an idiotic NBA rule that mandates high school graduates spend a year in limbo before allowing kids to be draft-eligible. By their own admission, at least in comments to posts here, Kentucky fans don’t give a damn about anything but winning – not the student half of student-athlete, not the methods of acquiring the hard-court services of a five-star recruit, and not the reputation of their program.
Just hang banners, baby.
And now when the going might get tough, the Wildcats get going.
Kentucky fans will side with Cal as they always do because he wins. The first sign of trouble, and Cal will wonder where his friends went, just as Joe B. Hall and Tubby Smith did when the championship droughts both authored lasted too long for fans to tolerate.
Fans will say that the UK vs. IU rivalry is pointless because of the recent record between the teams. Despite IU’s win last December, the five wins in Indiana’s past 22 efforts fueled the fire that the series had become irrelevant. On the verge of both schools being ranked in the top five, Calipari decides to pull the plug.
Indiana is responsible for refusing to continue the series on a neutral court, and good for them for doing that. This game should be played in front of the students, not the cigar chomping alums who like to preen around arenas as though their donation to the athletic fund provides the basketball, backboards, and jerseys.
College is about the students, and college basketball is about the players. The players will miss this game more than the fans, although given that the incoming class of Kentucky freshmen likely can’t find Lexington on a map, it may not mean a whole lot. That’s a problem for a different post.
For Indiana players, coaches, and fans, it will be missed because – let’s face it – these programs operate on different ends of the student-athlete continuum. It might not be good vs. evil, but it’s certainly diligent vs. expedient.
When coaches believe they are more important than the players and school itself, decisions like this one are made. When schools pay a coach more than $4-million per year while history professors like Kathi Kern make $95,000, what the hell is he supposed to think? And when the core players are recruited each and every year, what coach can claim more importance. Without Cal’s recruits next year, Kentucky would be lucky to win six games.
Want to know what Kentucky will be once Cal leaves – or is asked to leave? Look at Memphis.
A great series will end because of the hubris and insecurity of a basketball coach not up to playing Indiana now that the rosters are roughly even. Running from a fight doesn’t become Calipari.
