I think it’s only fair to start this with a disclaimer – I hate Jim Calhoun. I mean, I loathe and despise him with an unbridled passion that burns deep and true to the depths of my soul. And the reason why I hate him is not even a good one – I hate him because he was the first Big East coach to make $1 million per season…not Boeheim, Thompson, Carlissimo, Carnesecca, or Massimino, but a guy who got the UConn gig when it was not all that great of a job, but it was the best he could do after some limited success at Northeastern in the 70s and 80s.
That being said, I think Calhoun has certainly earned his current salary through having success at the highest level. Granted, not everyone thinks that way, and Coach Calhoun was not mentally equipped to handle a line of questioning on the subject without acting like the bitchy little diva that he is…but that has been covered in greater detail by more well-funded media outlets and I do not really have anything to add.
He has always been a great recruiter, although he will not have to actually recruit again as long as he stays at the program he has built in Storrs, CT. He is also one of the best big game coaches in college basketball history. I was at the Final Four when he beat Duke, despite having only a single player on his roster (Rip Hamilton) that could have started for Duke and probably only 1 or 2 other players that could have even made the Duke team. It was absolutely wonderful to watch him coach that game…especially against Coach K, who has only ever won a big game when he had the clearly better team, and has lost many, many, many big games when he had the far superior team. Sure, that kind of thing happens to every coach, but Coach K seems to lose more of those games than any other coach in college basketball today not named Rick Barnes.
I think that is the main difference between Coach K and Calhoun…their actual coaching ability when it matters most…but let’s talk about the main similarity between these two great coaches…they seem to get every single 50/50 call, and several others that they should never get, every single game, and they seem to never, ever stop bitching and whining at the refs.
OK, let’s get back to the Jim Calhoun hype machine after the 6 OT thriller against Syracuse. In my opinion, the matchup was kind of like the Duke-UConn final I mentioned earlier…Johnny Flynn is the only Syracuse player that could start for UConn, and there are probably only 2 or 3 other Syracuse players that could even earn a spot on the UConn squad…and UConn lost the game…and Calhoun started his spin campaign immediately afterwards.
If you didn’t see the press conference, he publicly called out his team and started talking about their inability to win the game in the first 4 overtimes, despite playing their first team against what was essentially Johnny Flynn and 4 random dudes in orange shirts. Incidentally – I found it VERY curious that Thabeet was involved in about 37,000 plays that involved his body bumping up against another player’s body when his feet were not on the ground, and it took until the 4th OT before he fouled out. In fact, it took until the 4th OT before ANY Uconn player fouled out. But, that is what we have come to expect from how the refs handle great shot blockers in big games – call only the fouls you have to call.
Anyway, in the postgame presser, Calhoun was practically begging the selection committee to give his team a 2 seed in the tournament…and I hope that the committee does not do it. UConn is a fatally flawed team, in terms of being a legitimate threat to win the whole thing, especially with Kevin Dyson watching the proceedings from the sideline with nicer clothes than I have ever owned in my life, despite the fact that I bill clients upwards of $100/hour and he is a college student. I also have a sneaking suspicion that his cuff links during the Syracuse game are worth more than at least one of the cars in my garage.
In my opinion, a 2 seed is probably the only way that UConn can win the title this year. It would provide Jim Calhoun with everything he needs to motivate his team to overcome many of the shortcomings that should have them watching the Final Four on T.V. with the rest of us. If that happens, we might all have to watch Calhoun with that shit-eating grin on his face, knowing that his team overcame the disrespect shown them by the selection committee, a disrespect that did not exist until Jim Calhoun created it out of thin freakin’ air immediately after the Syracuse game in the Big East tournament.
So, if any of you on the selection committee are reading (after the way I have universally praised the selection committee over the years, I am sure they are), please don’t disrespect UConn by giving them a 2 seed, even though they probably deserve one. That’s exactly what Jim Calhoun wants.
By the way – what a classy move by Calhoun to throw his players under the bus in the press conference. Hey Jim, even novelty t-shirts think that was tacky.
Incidentally, we still have UConn as a 1 seed in our bracket over at RPIBracket.com.
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First of all, thanks to John Calipari pulling a Brett Favre for a couple of days, I had to delay this blog post. As any of you regular readers know, I am a huge fan of the “Random Thoughts” format, as that ensures that I only need to come up with a paragraph or two for each subject, instead of a whole post. Truth be told, there are at least a couple of things that should warrant their own post, and when appropriate, I have so designated within this post.
