Posts tagged JohnCalipari at FanHouse

Travis Ford's brief run as the head coach at the University of Massachusetts helped the Minutemen back to respectability. His teams won more than 20 games each of the last two seasons and the program returned to the top of the Atlantic 10. He left for Oklahoma State, though, and the team faced a difficult decision about who would do the best job of keeping them at a level unreached since John Calipari left the school.

They could hire a second-tier coach with a winning pedigree, promote an assistant from within or reach into the past for a guy who represents that proud era mentioned above. The Minutemen appear to have chosen door number three and will announce former UMass guard Derek Kellogg as their next coach tomorrow.

Kellogg will be a popular hire. He's a local celebrity and has been an assistant at Memphis for the last eight seasons. UMass obviously hopes the recruiting skills he used to help the Tigers to the finals will keep the talent flowing to Amherst. You have to wonder if the Minutemen couldn't have accomplished all that and brought in a guy with head coaching experience to boot.

Ever since Memphis frittered away the NCAA Championship Game, there were rumors that John Calipari might be looking to make another try at the NBA. With Derrick Rose, Joey Dorsey and, potentially, Chris Douglas-Roberts heading to the league, the timing seemed right. Yesterday, though, just as Rose was announcing his departure, Coach Cal signed a contract extension to remain as the Tigers coach.

We found out why today. Tyreke Evans, McDonald's All-American and all-everything shooting guard, signed a letter of intent to play with the Tigers this afternoon. With all the openings in the starting five, Evans will be expected to shoulder a heavy load during what's widely believed to be his only collegiate season. Evans chose the Tigers over closer-to-home Villanova but it wasn't much of a surprise.

Evans is close to William Wesley, the Zelig of basketball in the United States. Wesley is close to just about everyone in the game but he's especially close to Calipari. The two men worked together to broker Memphis's deal with China and Wesley was close to Rose and it's believed he helped steer him to Memphis.

And then there's the unsavory business surrounding a murder committed by his cousin which Evans witnessed. It's believed to be gang-related and Evans might not mind getting out of Dodge for a while. As MJD points out at The Dagger, it's hard to argue with a recruiting pitch that includes the fact that "no one in Memphis wants to murder you."

John Feinstein of the Washington Post and William Rhoden of the New York Times are both discussing Memphis on the morning of the title game. Each writer has zeroed in on the same thing. Either because of the program's past history of NCAA rules issues, the color of the players skin or the style of play, Memphis has been the outsider at this Final Four featuring three of the game's most storied programs.

Rhoden takes issue with the overuse of terms like athletic and long when describing Memphis. Too often, they are code words for black players who play undisciplined basketball and are only interested in the highlight play. That's certainly the case here, since Memphis is guilty of neither of those things.

The reality is that the Memphis offense is not turning the ball over and the defense is suffocating, and Memphis can play virtually any style at any time.

Bill Self deserves every plaudit he's getting and it's easy to see why Oklahoma State wants to spend the GDP of Iceland to bring him to Stillwater but whose team was it that let their opponent off the mat on Saturday night? John Calipari's team kept their foot on UCLA's throat while it was Kansas that lost all discipline and focus.

As annoying as the constant "LeBron's leaving for NYC in 2010!!!11" discussions are, this one piques my interest: Newsday's Ken Berger wonders on his blog if the specter of LBJ will figure in Donnie Walsh's coaching hire decision this summer (assuming Isiah Thomas gets canned).

One thing I will not like is a coaching candidate that Walsh will no doubt be hearing from if he hasn't already: Memphis coach John Calipari. ... Calipari has a close working relationship with hoops maven Williams "Wes" Wesley, who has close ties to LeBron James. No doubt Coach Cal will try to play the LeBron card if and when he decides to go after the Knicks' coaching job. Wesley works closely with James' agent, Leon Rose.

To be clear, Berger doesn't approve of a Calipari hire though he does think LeBron could end up in a Knicks shirt. So in his reasoning, hiring Calipari isn't necessary: LBJ will consider the Knicks anyway.

Circumstantial evidence, though, does place Calipari in pole position for the gig, especially his well-reported relationship with Walsh's BFF Larry Brown. The LeBron issue might just constitute some frosting.

Here's a name you haven't thought of in a while: Larry Brown.

Well, this year's Final Four has quite a connection to Brown, who has coached pretty much everywhere. Including three of the teams in San Antonio.

Brown was an All-American at North Carolina (his jersey hangs in the rafters of the Dean Smith Center). He would later be an assistant coach under Smith. As a head coach, Brown led Kansas to their last National Championship in 1988 and led UCLA to the 1980 NCAA title game. While at Kansas, current Memphis coach John Calipari was an assistant under Brown.

Brown also gave current Kansas coach Bill Self his first coaching gig ... and helped induct UNC coach Roy Williams into the Basketball Hall of Fame this past summer.

Oh, and the site of the Final Four is San Antonio ... where Brown coached the NBA's Spurs in the early 1990s.

So who is Brown rooting for in the Final Four?

"When one team wins, then three teams that mean a lot to me will be pretty upset," Brown said yesterday before beginning his trek to San Antonio.

"I've got to really be careful about this," Brown said. "I'm just proud of all the programs."

"I think I've got a spot on each corner," he said.

John Calipari will never admit it. He'll likely stick to his "we make them when we have to" standard coachspeak about Memphis and free throws. Still the way Memphis sank free throws against Texas points out that making free throws early means a heck of a lot. The Tigers blew out the Longhorns 85-67 thanks in no small part to sinking free throws in the first half, and all the way through the second half. It helped keep Memphis in complete control.

Memphis shot 30-36 on free throws, 83.3%. A team that until this game shot 59.8% shot nearly 24% better. They didn't just do it in the final 3 minutes -- 14-18 (77.8%). They helped make it a blowout and foul fest because they shot 16-18 (88.9%) before that. If Memphis had shot their typical 60% (give or take) at the charity stripe, they would have led by maybe 10 instead of 20 -- and that assumes they would have made the front ends of the one-and-ones to that point.

It would have changed the entire tenor of the game. Memphis would have had only a 7-10 point lead going into the final few minutes. Texas wouldn't have had to settle for just popping for 3s. The fact that Memphis kept converting way above their average even through the final 3 minutes, forced Texas Coach Rick Barnes to finally waive the white flag with fouling with 45 seconds left.

College basketball coaches are a weird bunch. They are control freaks who are media savvy and live in an isolated world of hoopdom. But what if they weren't coaching? What would they do? Who would they be?

The blog CatsandBeer.com attempts to figure that out to hilarious results:

• Bo Ryan, Wisconsin: Evangelist
• Bob Huggins, West Virginia: No Frills Hired Muscle
• Darrin Horn, Western Kentucky: Guidance Counselor
• Roy Williams, North Carolina: Fried Chicken Restaurateur
• Bruce Pearl, Tennessee: Angry TV pitchman
• Ben Howland, UCLA: Landlord
• Tom Izzo, Michigan State: The Chief
• Bill Self, Kansas: Wisecracking plumber
• John Calipari, Memphis: Electrical Engineer
• Rick Barnes, Texas: Struggling farmer
• Jay Wright, Villanova: Man about town
• Bob McKillop, Davidson: Everybody's grandpa
• Sean Miller, Xavier: Man who'd say "bubbie"
• Tony Bennett, Washington State: Excited Mormon
• Trent Johnson, Stanford: The Tree
• Rick Pitino, Louisville: Wiseguy/Scott Baio body double

Much has been made about Memphis's inability to make free throws consistently. Our own Michael David Smith relayed John Calipari's ridiculous statements about winning yesterday's game with Mississippi State at the free throw line and they deserve to be mocked.

Coaches used to harp on making free throws almost above all else. When teams give you a chance at free points, you best take it or else you'll be going home a loser. This year, though, Memphis was joined by Louisville and Georgetown in making less than 50% from the line but only the Hoyas paid the price. D.J. Augustin of Texas airballed a free throw to set up Miami's last chance to tie their game and the Longhorns only made 12-of-21 overall, but the Canes still fell short. On Saturday, five of the eight winning teams were below 70% from the line.

Can it be that making free throws is no longer a necessary ingredient to winning games? For teams like Memphis and Louisville, talent may indeed trump these shortcomings. But take a look at the two biggest weekend upsets and one near-miss for some evidence about the enduring need to make your foul shots.

The Memphis Tigers, the No. 1 seed in the South region, struggled to beat 8 seed Mississippi State to advance to the Sweet 16 because they couldn't make their free throws, going a horrendous 15-for-32 from the line.

And coach John Calipari's reaction is, "What, me worry?" Writes Thayer Evans of the New York Times:

"What I'm taking great pride in is we won it with Chris's free throw," Memphis Coach John Calipari said. "So all that stuff about our free-throw shooting now goes out the window, I guess."

Calipari's remark elicited laughter from the news media because Memphis (35-1) finished the game 15 of 32 from the free-throw line (46.9 percent). The Tigers entered the game shooting 59.7 percent from the line.

Mississippi State (23-11) made 14 of 20 free-throw attempts (70 percent). The Bulldogs had a game-high 21 points from Gordon, a junior guard.

"We made more free throws than them," Calipari said. "We beat them at the free-throw line."

The media were right to laugh. Calipari is a great coach whose team is now 35-1 even though it ranks dead last in the nation in free throw shooting. But he's in serious denial if he thinks ranking dead last in free throw shooting can't eventually catch up to his team. March is too late for him to do anything about it, though, which means denial may be the best option Calipari has.

Of the NCAA tournament's #1 seeds, only North Carolina is graduating more than half of its players.

A report released Monday found 86 percent of Tar Heels men's players earned diplomas during a six-year period. The other top seeds were far worse: 45 percent at Kansas and 40 percent at UCLA and Memphis.

The study was conducted by Richard Lapchick, head of the University of Central Florida's Institute for Diversity and Ethics in Sport. It evaluated four different freshman classes for a period beginning in 1997-98 and ending with 2000-01. Though the players evaluated are no longer on campus, the report intends to provide a snapshot of academic trends.

It doesn't stop there. Of the #2 seeds, Texas and Tennessee only graduated 33%. Duke is up to 67%. Georgetown graduated 82%.

Mind you, of the eight teams listed, only Memphis' John Calipari, Duke's Mike Krzyzewski and Texas' Rick Barnes have been with his program for most of the period tested. Kansas' rate was gained during Roy Williams' tenure there (he's now at UNC whose numbers are reflected from Dean Smith and Bill Guthridge's time).

If we had a Final Four of the top programs at graduating players, it would be Butler, Notre Dame, Purdue and Davidson (all are at the 91% mark).