What was all of that "built for March" talk? We're crying on the yacht instead.

We’re crying on the yacht—if we can still call it a yacht—after the team built for March went 0-2 in March Madness, losing their opening game on Friday of the SEC Tournament and the first day of the NCAA Tournament a week later. In the Big Dance, Kentucky lost to the No. 14 seed, Oakland, playing in front of a sea of Blue in Pittsburgh. Now, the Big Blue Nation is heading home early once again to watch the rest of their favorite sporting event from the couch; unfortunately, a new tradition for Kentucky fans.

Far from the gold standard, Kentucky hasn’t seen the second weekend of the NCAA Tournament since 2019, suffering first-round losses to a No. 15 seed and a No. 14 seed. Indiana has more tournament wins in that span. By losing to Oakland on Thursday, John Calipari added a third 10-loss season in the last four years. Those numbers speak for themselves, especially at Kentucky.

Before this season began, Calipari acknowledged the program’s fall from the top in the last few years. “You know, we’ve been good, we just haven’t been Kentucky good,” he said in November, promoting his talented recruiting class—his guys–as the team he’d been waiting for. As the season went on, Kentucky dropped some games it shouldn’t have, even losing three in a row in Rupp Arena for the first time in history. Still, the fan base stuck with the team, hoping and expecting Kentucky would return to greatness in March. They were built for it, remember?

The elite shooting, the lottery picks, the All-American, the fan favorites–the pieces were there to do something special. Off the court, they seemed as tight-knit as any group Calipari has had in Lexington. I’ve said many times before that they’re like a group of best friends who happened to get picked on the same basketball team. They were exceptional in that way, but ultimately came up short of the program’s standards when the games mattered most.

Calipari said afterward, “I’ve been in the ups and downs of this sport, but this one I’m really hurting for them.”

“If UK doesn’t win the title this year, then blame Cal.”

Sam Bowie said it in January, moments after Big Z’s memorable first-half debut against Georgia in Lexington: “If UK doesn’t win the title this year, then blame Cal.”

Bowie was joking at the time, I think. Still, there is a lot of truth in his statement following another first-round exit in a game in which the Wildcats were a 15-point favorite, playing with the majority of the crowd behind them. If not a new trend, maybe Kentucky fans tip their caps to Jack Gohlke and call it one of those nights. But there have been too many of “those nights.” Too often, the superior team, Kentucky, has played in fear of its opponent or under immense pressure, while the underdog had all of the confidence in the arena. It happened against Saint Peter’s in 2022. It happened last Friday in Nashville. The wrong team played loose and free, so the wrong team went home at the end of the night. It happened tonight in Pittsburgh against a school out of the Horizon League playing in its fourth-ever NCAA Tournament. The team with all the future NBA stars got bounced, not the mid-major.

Why? Calipari, the one common denominator in those losses, couldn’t find an explanation, instead partially blaming youth. “When you have a really young team and you look at where the mistakes came from, they were freshmen,” he said. They’re freshmen! We don’t know how they’re going to respond to this stuff,” he added.

The “we’re young” excuse is exhausting. It’s March, not November, and he chose to build a team full of freshmen when college basketball is older than ever. He’s not changing his ways moving forward, either. He made that clear when asked if two first-round exits in three years would make him consider a new formula. He replied, “I’ve done this with young teams my whole career, and it’s going to be hard for me to change that because we’ve helped so many young people and their families that I don’t see myself just saying, okay, we’re not going to recruit freshmen. I mean, the thing that we’ve been blessed with is families bring their sons to us and we do what we’re supposed to do to help them prepare for the rest of their lives.”

So, if he doesn’t know how freshmen respond in March (his words), but he intends to keep relying on freshmen moving forward, what’s next? Another year of wasted talent in Lexington? How many young NBA draft picks does Kentucky need to see the second weekend or win the SEC again? How many superstars does Kentucky need to win ONE postseason game? How many Rob Dillinghams and Antonio Reeveses and Reed Sheppards and seven-footers does it take to beat Oakland? Calipari had PLENTY of talent this year–his guys, too–so how can the Big Blue Nation possibly get excited for another year of elite freshman talent?

I’m worried it can’t. This was his year with his dudes. They even got a head start in July with extra practices and four bonus scrimmages in Canada. Still, the season ended with the second-worst loss in school history, two years after the worst loss in school history. Kentucky can’t keep doing this, telling fans the regular season doesn’t matter and the SEC Tournament doesn’t matter, only to tap out early in the NCAA to inferior opponents. This isn’t “Kentucky good,” nor is it the Gold Standard or the Greatest Tradition In College Basketball.