Sam Bowie (jokingly) on John Calipari: "If we don't win a championship this year it's his fault."

Sam Bowie, whose No. 31 jersey is retired by the Kentucky men’s basketball program, knows a thing or two about what a championship-caliber team looks like.

Although Bowie’s Wildcats never won the Big Dance, his 1983-84 team sure came close. That group reached the Final Four before falling to Georgetown, 52-40, in what was arguably their worst shooting performance of the entire season. Bad timing for an otherwise incredible team.

On Saturday at Rupp Arena, the entire ’83-84 team was honored at halftime of Kentucky’s 105-96 win against Georgia. Bowie was the last one introduced to the crowd and he took the mic to share some words with the jam-packed crowd. He closed out his short speech by ribbing current head coach John Calipari — Bowie is expecting a title come early April.

“Based on the roster we have with Coach Calipari,” said Bowie. “I don’t know if he’s ever been blamed for anything, but if we don’t win a championship this year it’s his fault.”

Bowie’s comments were made in jest (and the Rupp Arena crowd loved it), but we don’t doubt there’s some truth in his words. Kentucky, ranked No. 8 in the country, is now 14-3 on the season with a 4-1 mark in SEC play. The ‘Cats score the ball better than literally any other team in the country and have more than enough talent to make a deep NCAA Tournament run this spring.

As for Calipari, he took the joke in stride. In fact, Bowie made sure Calipari knew the jab was coming ahead of time.

“He told me he was going to say that,” Calipari explained postgame. “I said, go ahead, everybody else is throwing darts, you might as well be in there, too. If he watched the second half, I don’t think he would be saying it.”

Calipari is right — the second half was quite ugly. Zvonimir Ivisic‘s unbelievable college debut distracted most people from what was actually happening on the floor. After leading 54-35 at the halftime break, Kentucky actually lost the second half by 10 while giving up 61 points to Georgia. A 28-point UK lead with less than eight minutes left disintegrated down the stretch into just a nine-point win.

As has been the case all season long, Kentucky’s defense still needs some serious fine-tuning. But this might just be what the Wildcats are at this point. Luckily, the offense is deadly enough that UK can still outscore its opponents more often than not.

But now we know that if a national championship isn’t the end result this season, we have someone to place the blame on. Phew.