Calipari: UK would deserve three-seed if tourney started today
If you weren't thinking about Kentucky's NCAA Tournament seed possibilities by Saturday, chances are you're thinking about it now.
The selection committee is taking a page out of the College Football Playoff selection committee's playbook and teasing where they would seed teams now. On Saturday, they announced that Kentucky would be a three-seed if the tournament started today.
Sign up for a premium subscription to Cats Illustrated today.
Selection Committee's Mock Seeding
After coaching his Cats to a road win against Alabama, Calipari said that seeding was fair. Some might argue the Cats aren't deserving of a three-seed, but don't count Calipari among them. He's been critical of his bunch but shared his logic after the game.
"Because we’re a talented team and if we start defending and we’ll get our offense together and teams that we’ve beaten already," Calipari said, surely implicitly referencing Kentucky's wins over North Carolina and South Carolina especially.
"We’ve struggled some at times, but let me say this to all of you: Every team in the country is having issues right now. We just want to be better at dealing with ours than they are dealing with theirs. Every team. Tell me the team and I’ll say, ‘Yeah, well, let me say this. They just got this thing and that thing.’ Everybody has issues. You gotta deal with those issues better than everybody else."
Beyond being okay with UK's earliest mock seeding, Calipari likes the committee's new approach to projecting the top part of the field early.
"I know there’s some coaches that didn’t like it. ‘Ah, puts more pressure on us.’ No, no, no, no. There’s transparency now," Calipari said. "If someone moves on, we’ll all know why they moved into the top four. If someone moves out, you will be able to write why they moved out. No smoke-filled rooms. ‘I like them.’ None of that. It’s out there. Now we all know.”
Calipari did acknowledge that at times this season Kentucky hasn't played like a three seed. He also said that the committee has never given one of his teams a better seed than he thought they deserved.
Most Kentucky fans would wholeheartedly agree.
Sign up for a premium subscription to Cats Illustrated today.
