Let's Do a Little Creative Blind Resume (BTI's Rants and Ramblings)

It’s that time of year when the sports networks will flood your eye sockets with blind resumes of potential NCAA Tournament teams. Certainly, Kentucky is going to be used on a bunch of those blind resumes as we sit squarely on the bubble. But I thought I would get a little more creative and do a blind resume of coaches, not teams.

It’s probably not that hard to figure out but the two coaches are:

COACH A: John Calipari (2016-2023)
COACH B: Tubby Smith (2000-2007)

Now, you might say that Cal’s first six years were so exceptional that it is not fair to remove those from this comparison. But I would counter that I have also removed Tubby’s first two teams, a national champion, and an Elite 8 team, two of his best. The more significant point is about how we compare our impression of the last eight years of the Tubby Smith era against the last eight years (almost) of the John Calipari era. Before seeing the stats above, which guy did you think had a better eight-year run? I would think most would have said, Calipari. The reality is Smith likely had a slightly better run than Cal has had against a stiffer SEC and non-conference schedule (i.e., Top 25 matchups).

If you ask me, it says more about how we view Tubby back then versus how we view Calipari now. Obviously, nobody is happy with where the program is right now under Calipari. But many/most fans would probably still keep Cal on as coach. I don’t remember many wanting Tubby to remain coach after the 2007 season. I think everybody should take a good look inside because if you don’t have the same opinion now as you did in 2007, you are just flat-out inconsistent.

(*I do recognize that Calipari lost an NCAA Tournament because of COVID and he may still make it this year, so his NCAA Tournament stats could easily have been 7 out of 8. But that is still one worse than Tubby.)