John Calipari previews 'wide open' NCAA Tournament

Kentucky‘s postseason woes have rolled over to yet another season, and the Wildcats will not be SEC Tournament champions for the fifth-straight year.

Losing to Vanderbilt 80-73 in the quarterfinals Friday night, head coach John Calipari says this year’s NCAA Tournament’s field is wide open — which could actually work in UK’s favor.

“My concern is my team. I got to get these guys playing like we have this year to where we’re walking into the tournament in that mindset of, look, here we go together, let’s do something crazy,” Calipari said after the loss. “I got to get them to that. We had two good days here where I thought they were in a good frame of mind. We were fine until we got punched. That’s when we’re not what we need to be.

“But it’s going to be an interesting tournament. I don’t know where they’ll seed us. But we’re going to have a bunch of teams in from this league (potentially 9), and I think people will find out this league was as good as any. You talk top to bottom, I mean, there were no easy games.”

Calipari knows all too well what it means to ‘do something crazy,’ in the postseason. He has countless years of NCAA Tournament experience, and has even had some improbable runs at Kentucky over the past 13 seasons.

Big Blue Nation will remember the incredible run the No. 8 seed Kentucky’s run to the 2014 NCAA Championship game. After defeating undefeated Wichita State, UK guard Aaron Harrison would hit game-winning three-pointers in consecutive games against Louisville, Michigan and Wisconsin before coming up short to No. 7 seed UConn in the title game.

That was crazy.

That Kentucky team finished the season 21-11, the same record as the current UK team entering the tournament. With the loss to Vanderbilt, ESPN’s Joe Lunardi ranks the Wildcats as a seven-seed, essentially on par with the 2013-14 Kentucky team.

Could this year’s squad recreate the magic of the Juluis Randle-led Wildcats? Or will Kentucky face a similar fate that it did last year? We can speculate after the brackets are released Sunday afternoon at 6 p.m. ET live on ESPN.