Buzz Williams: "Just let Coach Calipari be [SEC] spokesperson"

For the past several years, John Calipari has been preaching the strength of SEC Basketball. Last Friday, he said the SEC is the best league in the country, to the point eight teams deserve an NCAA Tournament bid and the committee should place the top four teams — Auburn, Kentucky, Arkansas, and Tennessee — in different regions. A day later, he doubled down, tweeting that any SEC team with a 9-9 conference record deserves to be in the tournament.

Any team in the SEC that’s 9-9 should be in the NCAA Tournament.

The top four teams in our league went 35-1 at home. Crazy!

We are the best league and our teams deserve that respect!!

— John Calipari (@UKCoachCalipari) March 6, 2022

Not surprisingly, those comments have made Calipari a popular man down here in Tampa. Buzz Williams, whose Aggies finished SEC play with a 9-9 record and are on the bubble, was ready to anoint Calipari league spokesperson after Texas A&M’s 83-80 overtime win vs. Florida.

“How would you assess your team’s chances for an NCAA bid, or worthiness for a bid,” Williams was asked in the postgame press conference. “And what do you think you have to do here to make that happen?”

“What I’ve tried to do, John, is just let Coach Calipari be the spokesperson for our league, and I completely agree with what he tweeted out,” Williams said. “If you go 9-9 in the SEC, you ought to be in the tournament. But I am not in the Hall of Fame, in any Hall of Fame, and so I direct all postseason questions to Coach Cal. I know you have access to him, so I’ll — whatever Coach says, that’s what the Aggies vote for.”

Frank Martin: “This league has no bottom”

Frank Martin’s Gamecocks were also 9-9 in SEC play, but are nowhere near the NCAA Tournament bubble. They lost yesterday to Mississippi State 73-51 to finish the season 18-13. Still, Martin brought up Calipari’s remarks in his postgame press conference.

“I have been in the Big 12 where teams finished .500, and they were celebrated. For some reason here, we have to apologize for being .500 in the No. 1 league in the country. That doesn’t make sense to me.

“I think Calipari said it best the other day, and it’s not about going to the NCAA tournament. All these teams that finish 9-9, this league has no bottom, man. It’s really, really hard. But, I mean, if decisions are made based on the NET [rankings], then we probably ain’t going because that means that it’s style and point differential.”

As we count down the minutes ’til Selection Sunday, I’m sure Calipari’s cries for justice for the SEC are only going to get louder.