This Game Sucks. That, and Go Kentucky.

IT SHOULDN’T be a surprise that reports are now surfacing about Kentucky head coach John Calipari 'desperately wanting' to return to the NBA. He really does have nothing to prove any more at the NCAA level, having mastered the arts of both fully understanding the absurdity of the college game and then applying that knowledge to its most absurd ends – the application which, the way things are going, is likely to result in Calipari winning his 2nd national championship at Kentucky in 4 years, and seeing his team put up a 40-0 record in the process, which is the best in the history of the sport.

Calipari has, of course, mastered the art of recruiting in the so-called ‘one and done’ era. For those who don’t understand this, the NBA decided a few years ago that it no longer wanted to be drafting kids straight out of high school. The reasons for this most likely have to do with quite a few of those kids – *cough cough Kwame Brown cough cough* – not working out so well after much was expected (and invested). While some élite teenage talents have opted to join the D-League, or maybe play abroad for a year, the vast majority of them venture off to play college basketball for a year, or maybe two, before heading off to the NBA.

Now, this makes a mockery of the whole naïve idea that players are actually playing college basketball for the purposes of going to college. A lot of them are, of course. The vast majority of them, in fact – a fact the NCAA is happy to point out in its continued insistence that it is little more than a corrupt cartel of an organization. But if you’re considered a can’t miss, über-prospect, about all you need to do is maintain a barely passing average for a semester of meaningless freshman classes without ever declaring a major. Then you play out your season, declare for the draft, and who really gives a shit how you do in that English 101 class at that point? It’s ridiculous to think these guys give two shits about going to class – and that’s not to blame the kids either, because if you were in the same boat, isn’t that exactly what you would do as well? I know that I would. What’s the point of going to a school if the school isn’t going to help you in your chosen profession? Why even make the pretense?

Now, since these kids are going to check out as quickly as they possibly can, a good number of the control freaky coaches in the world don’t really want to recruit them. But not John Calipari. Like I say, John Calipari pushes everything to the extreme. He’s taken two previous schools – UMass and Memphis –to the verge of national championships, and had the Final Four appearances of both of them vacated for improprieties which, while not directly attributable to him, speak to a rather casual regard for rules of eligibility put forth by the NCAA. And you can decry the rules and think they’re dumb – heaven knows that I do – but you should at least attempt to follow them. But with one-and-done players in college basketball’s midsts, how can anyone take any sort of enforcement seriously. We all know those kids are only there for a year and then they’re out. Again, why even make the pretense?

So, instead of shying away from uncoachable, unapproachable, one-and-done kids who’ve checked out from the beginning and are counting down the days before they can leave (a nonsensical stereotype, by the way, but one put forth by any number of college basketball apologists in the media, most of them former coaches), John Calipari goes the other way and, essentially, recruits a whole team’s worth of one-and-dones every single year. It makes sense, actually, if you want to win in college basketball – it stands to reason that guys ticketed for NBA stardom have the best talent, so why not just gather up all the best talent available? Which is precisely what he’s gone about attempting to do. Not always successfully, of course – the year after he won his first NCAA title, his next one-and-done iteration was being one-and-doned in the NIT by Robert Morris. Great talent often has great egos, and it can be quite a challenge to get said talent to play together as a team, imploring upon them the idea that success of the team will pay off greater dividends down the road in their individual, professional careers. Even though his reputation proceeds him, and his is a problem most coaches would die to have – having what seems to be too much talent to actually manage – Calipari deserves some credit as a coach for being somewhat able to convince these guys of the value of being selfless on the court.

Great coaches also anticipate the trends of the game, and this year’s iteration of the mercenary army from the Bluegrass State is perfectly suited to go 40-0 because they are so big, and so athletic, that they completely swallow up the defensive end of the floor. Kentucky’s guards are in the 6’5”-6’7” range, and the frontcourt starters all verge on 7’0” in height. And this is another area of the game where Calipari has pushed it to the ad absurdum. To beat Kentucky, you have to shoot over them. But this is college basketball in 2015, a game in which nobody can shoot.

If you tuned into the last 2:00 of the games in the first four days of the NCAA tournament, you got some fantastic finishes and, in the case of LSU and Baylor, some truly stunning collapses. Five games were decided by a single point, two games went to OT, and eight games were decided by four points or less – and that was just the first day. It was pretty gripping and dramatic stuff. The first two days of the tourney are full of wild upsets involving weird teams from weird schools in weird cities you’ve never heard of, which makes for great viewing. But as The Lose has said before, the NCAA tournament offers far more in terms of theatre than it does in terms of actual quality basketball. Some of this is owing to stage fright, of course. Nerves take over, and players respond to stepping onto the game’s greatest stage by becoming tentative, playing not to lose somewhat instinctively. This is always going to be the case. These are just kids, after all, and the pressure of the moment turns out to be far greater than what they were expecting. The quality of play somewhat naturally tends to regress.

Problem is, the quality of play in 2015 is regressing from a level that was already lousy to begin with. Tune in for the last 2:00 of a game on Thursday and you got high drama. Tune in during any of the other 38:00, and what you got to watch was abysmal. But this is simply more of the same, as the entire game of college basketball was abysmal the past season. This article from Seth Davis of SI back in February outlines the games many problems. Not only do I agree with the proposed solutions in that article – a shorter shot clock, a widening of the lanes and broadening of the arcs to create more space – that article also accomplishes two things I’m wholly in favour of: 1) putting the blame solely where it belongs for this mess, which is on the coaches; and 2) debunking myths about the quality of today’s players. The second ‘problem’ often being spread by the perpetrators of the first problem, of course, since coaches are self-preservationist by nature and quick to blame the kids, albeit often in vague and veiled terms.

The game of college basketball is slow, overly physical, dull, and decidedly unimaginative. In the past, it has always been the breeding ground for radical innovation, as creative coaches have used ideas to attempt to one-up each other and overcome disadvantages in recruiting. Now we have cookie cutter CEOs in pinstripes patrolling the sidelines, none of whom dare be the least bit imaginative in their trade. There are far too many teams with lots of unrefined athletes that seem to do no phase of the game well except for playing defense, albeit through the most physical and cynical means possible. Hey, coaches, here’s a good idea – you have some talented guys here, so how about if you, oh, you know, teach them how to shoot and run a functioning offense?

I mean, seriously here, can anybody shoot? UAB shot .347 from the floor in the first round of the NCAA tourney, while Butler shot .333 from the floor – and both those teams won. Teams shot 32% from the 3-point line on the first day of the tourney – which means that, at that low of percentage, it’s basically no longer worth it to attempt the shot for the sake of trying to get that extra point. Yet 30% of all shots attempted that day were from beyond the 3-point arc, which means that 20% of the shots taken that day were fundamentally terrible ideas.

And see, that right there is bad coaching. Bad coaching means assembling a team that cannot adjust and go to Plan B when Plan A isn’t working. Why are so many teams so stubbornly sticking to plans that don’t fundamentally work? It is the equivalent of bashing your head against a brick wall – and there were certainly of loose bricks being tossed around, enough to build entire new gymnasia. Because in this day and age, with the defenses the way they are, and with the rules the way they are, attempting to win a game entirely through half court play is, mathematically, a losing proposition. If you’re shooting 42% from the floor and 32% from three – the totals from the first day of the tourney – you’re making it really hard to win. Here’s another novel idea – RUN! Why doesn’t anyone run a fast break? Seems to me a good way to change some of those horrible numbers would be to get some buckets in transition and, come to think of it, isn’t a good way to combat a stingy defense to beat it down the court and score before they have a chance to set up? But that would require actual imagination and encouraging players to take some risks. We can’t have that, now can we? Next thing you know, the kids might actually be having fun on the floor.

This is why I say you should fire all the coaches. Their tactics are unsound, their approaches illogical, and their players certainly don’t seem to improve, which is a waste. I think there is an enormous segment of the college coaching fraternity that is actually disinterested in their teams trying to run an offense – because teaching offense is actually hard, and requires thought and technique, whereas coaching defense is all about dogging your players to give it that old college try.

But the old college try ain’t gonna work against Kentucky. One of the prototypical contemporary college basketball teams – Cincinnati – took on Kentucky in the 2nd round and decided to try and beat them basically by being physical and tenacious and overly aggressive at every turn. The one problem with that was that they forgot to put the ball in the basket. They shot 31% and threw up some of the single 3-point attempts more likely to land in the front row than in the basket. You need to be able to SHOOT to beat Kentucky.

The game has been trending this way for years now, and the sharpest coaches in the game – guys like Louisville’s Rick Pitino, Florida’s Billy Donovan, and Syracuse’s Jim Boeheim – have come to realize that the best way to win is just squelch the life out of the other side with a stifling defense. Offense? Meh, they’ll figure it out. Just figure out how to score 40 and hold the other guys to 38. And this year’s Kentucky squad takes defense to the ludicrous end. Their opponents shoot .355 from the floor for the season. The Wildcats are a flat-out mismatch for contemporary college basketball offenses. They’re likely to go 40-0 this year by simply suffocating their opponents and running just enough of a function offense on the other end of the floor. They’ll go down in history as a bastion of perfection during a period of time when the game was as imperfect as it’s ever been. Their offense is, well, enough. That’s really all it needs to be. Given that teams are so terrified to try and play a transition game against Kentucky’s collection of thoroughbreds, the games turn into these slow, dull, insufferable marches into futility. It’s boring and it’s bad, and Kentucky is seeming almost unbeatable.

And you know what? Good. Let them go 40-0. I think this team, as constructed by Kentucky, is genius. It’s cynically, perfectly constructed to take advantage of the sorry state of the game of college basketball. Hell, I hope Calipari comes back with a whole new team of one-and-dones and goes 40-0 next year. Let him win 100 in a row. The NCAA, as currently constructed, is a travesty to begin with and verges on being an illegal operation, but people love their college sports, by gosh – including me, or I used to, anyway. I didn’t even bother filling out a bracket this year, which is the first time that’s happened in 30 years. I’m completely disgusted with the shamateurism of the “student athlete” as defined by the NCAA, and also completely disgusted with The Cult of the Coach that goes right along with it. But what ultimately leads to change in sports is not anyone questioning the morality or legality of the enterprise. No, it happens when people get bored. And watching Kentucky win all the time, and do so in the most boring fashion imaginable like they are doing now, would ultimately turn into must-miss TV.

Next up for Kentucky is West Virginia on Thursday night in the Sweet 16. Go Kentucky. Win and win and win some more, and make a mess and a mockery of this whole stupid enterprise. I doubt I’ll watch. If I want to see bricklaying and guys moving at half speed in disorganized patterns, I’ll go out to California Avenue during the work day and watch the construction.