Calipari on early NCAA exit and next year's team: "We've got a chance."

More from John Calipari’s Tuesday afternoon conversation with Paul Finebaum from the Destin shoreline.

Calipari admitted he is still gutted by his team’s surprise first-round exit from last season’s NCAA Tournament. “We were the fifth-seeded team in that tournament and lost,” he told Finebaum. “I’m still sick over it.”

Calipari proceeded to list all of Kentucky’s returning players from last year’s fifth-seeded team and the four incoming additions. He also confirmed a new assistant coaching hire to replace Jai Lucas, but can’t name KT Turner publicly until the hire is finalized with the university.

“We’ve got a terrific group,” Calipari said of the 2022-23 team, which reports to campus this week. “It’s Kentucky. We play for the national championship. And my thing is, you always want to be in the hunt. We were in the hunt last year. Two years ago, we won our league by three games and they shut down the tournament, but that team could’ve won the whole thing.”

He is, of course, referring to the 2019-20 squad headlined by SEC Player of the Year Immanuel Quickley, SEC Player of the Year candidate Nick Richards, and a lottery pick in Tyrese Maxey. Calipari is not exaggerating that team’s championship hopes.

Regarding his new team, Calipari told Finebaum, “You want to be in the hunt and we were (last year) and I’m looking at this team and we’ve got a chance. We really do.”

Reflecting on last year’s NCAA Tournament exit

Later in that same interview, Calipari revisited the pain of the loss to the Peacocks and revealed how he believes it happened.

“There’s some grieving now,” he admitted to Finebaum. “Part of it is, I’ve never had a team lose to a seed like that. But they weren’t a 15-seed, Saint Peter’s was really good. But we’ve never done that so I had to deal with that like, OK, where do you go? What could I have done?

“We weren’t great the last five games. We were a little bit beat up and guys didn’t come back the way I thought they would. But again, you know what I do. If we lose, who’s taking responsibility? I am. If we win, I push those kids to the front and you move to the back a little bit. But I’m going to figure out a way to put this on me because I don’t want it on the kids. I’d rather it be on me. I’m the adult in the room. These young people gave everything they could to the university.

“That team was exciting. I loved coaching last year’s team, had a ball. But you know what? That last game, we just weren’t what we were two weeks earlier or three weeks earlier.”

As Calipari sees it, injuries played a major role in the late-year regression. Point guard Sahvir Wheeler missed four games, TyTy Washington three, and Kellan Grady played through crippling plantar fasciitis in both feet.

“I don’t think TyTy ever got healthy,” Calipari explained. “I played Kellan too many minutes.

“But at the end of the day, you can’t steal the joy of that season. The last game, you gotta go through it and you gotta deal with it, and I want to lead by showing our guys, OK, now next, here we go… We’re getting ready for this coming year to go do what we do.”