There's a lot of frowning faces in the home state these days. Here we are in March and a majority of Kentuckians are mad.
It doesn't seem so unusual that a certain level of madness has descended on the state. It's March and most of us live for March Madness.
But this is a March unlike any we've seen in decades and few Kentuckians are happy about it. Why is that?
Simple. Who's Kentucky's first opponent in this year's tournament? It's the exact same as for Louisville. And Western Kentucky. And Murray State. And Bellarmine.
All these schools will play nobody in the first round of March Madness because not one of them made the tournament. The only Kentucky school in the tournament is Morehead and if you don't read this before Saturday, they're probably already home, too.
Before we move on, it's a good time to point out the cruelty of the NCAA selection committee pitting two schools with intermingled fan bases, and the only two from Appalachia, against each other in Morehead and West Virginia University. Why couldn't Morehead play Duke or somebody we can collectively hate.
Maybe because Duke isn't in the tourney either? That is some consolation for Kentucky fans, but probably not for Louisville fans still sore from Duke dealing their team its final loss.
What Louisville fans are probably more focused on is the fact the tournament selection committee was headed up by one Mitch Barnhardt, aka the University of Kentucky Athletic Director. Surely Mr. Barnhardt would never stab UK's biggest rival in the back that way. Would he?
While Louisville fans might have something to hang their "we got hosed" banners on, Kentucky fans not so much. This Kentucky team has no business in the Millard Invitational, much less the NCAA Tournament. Every time this team showed signs of life by beating an opponent, it followed with a performance that made you wonder if the players had ever seen a basketball game before or a coaching decision that convinced you the coach needed remedial, too.
There's somewhere between 2.5 and 3 million Kentucky basketball fans that can tell you starting with all new 18 year olds every year when other schools keep most players into their 20s is not the best blueprint for building a championship program. Not to point out the obvious, but if Tubby Smith oversaw a season like this one during his Kentucky tenure, he'd have woken to a moving crew packing his televisions.
Who am I kidding, it would have been way worse.
But Mr. Smith was never given a lifetime contract like Mr. Calipari who made approximately $1,000,000 for each win in the 2021 season. Remember when Cal said getting 5 players drafted in the first round was the most important day in Kentucky basketball history?
Eleven years later Kentucky has produced many first round draft picks, but only 1 championship. In the same time, Duke, Villanova, and Connecticutt have won 2 championships a piece.
Maybe this is the year the coach will recognize the things that matter to Kentucky fans: high quality play, a multi-year relationship with players, and championships.
After the year he had, he better be recognizing something.