West Virginia Sends Kentucky Home, Does Us a Favor By Canning Coach Calipari

"Instant Karma's gonna get you, gonna knock you right on the head."—John Lennon

On March 22, 2010, the NCAA rejected the University of Memphis' final appeal , which officially forced the Tigers to vacate its record-setting 2007-08 college basketball season.

By now, the story is old news—someone on the team, all but known to be phenom Derrick Rose, was actually ineligible because someone else apparently took the SAT for him.

Consequently, a trip to the Final Four and an overtime loss in the championship game to the Kansas Jayhawks never happened, nor did 38 wins.

Fast-forward to March 27, 2010, otherwise known as Saturday night.

On the date in question, the West Virginia Mountaineers pulled off an upset and sent the No. 1-seeded Kentucky Wildcats packing from the NCAA Tournament's Elite Eight.

This constitutes big news because the 'Cats had picked up the "Favorite to Win the National Championship" mantle in the wake of the Jayhawks' untimely demise.

It also is worth mentioning because the Kentucky program is "led" by John Calipari.

The same slickster who was at the helm of that Memphis Tiger program that strayed from the letter of the NCAA law.

Something that also bears mentioning because Coach Cal's name is noticeably absent from the linked story detailing the rejected Memphis plea.

Those of you who tuned in at the beginning of the CBS broadcast of the West Virginia-Kentucky game also heard the fabulous voice of Dick Enberg relate this little tidbit: "In the last five years, [Calipari's] teams have won 30 games or more. No coach in the history of the game can ever make that claim."

Uhhhh...neither can Coach Cal.

Thankfully, the Basketball Gods weren't fooled.

Even if everyone else seemed intent on letting Calipari skate for his transgression, it turns out the ethereal puppet-masters had no such plans. Instead, they used the Mountaineers as their weapon of choice to deliver their godsmack.

Sadly, the Kentucky kids and Lexington faithful got caught in the crossfire.

No disrespect to the Wildcat athletes or their fans, but we should all be ecstatic about Kentucky's exit. We should be rejoicing that the sight of Teflon John cutting down that last net in Indianapolis has been delayed for at least one more merciful season.

Calipari might be an excellent coach, but he's not someone for whom we should root. Not at this point in his 50 years of living.

That means Kentucky basketball is on my "Do Not Celebrate" list until he moves on which, if history tells us anything, will be about six months before the NCAA wipes out his last season in the Bluegrass State and slams the school with sanctions.

Again, it's nothing personal against the school, fans, or program. As per the man's own implicit request, it's all about him.

Incidentally, I'd argue Calipari isn't all that great as a strategist.

His failure to heed Jay Bilas' advice to pressure West Virginia when the ball-handling Joe Mazzulla went to the bench and eventually fouled out was pretty inexcusable.

That seemed pretty obvious given the trouble the Mountaineers were having with the pressure absent Mazzulla, but nobody's perfect, so let's give Ol' John the benefit of the doubt.

It will be his last from me.

See, the Memphis story is not the first time Teflon John has run into such trouble.

In fact, it's eerily similar to his issues at the University of Massachusetts. Nevertheless, college basketball observers still act as if he's some paradigm of virtue, someone to be congratulated.

Perhaps even emulated.

During the 1995-96 campaign, Coach Calipari rode Marcus Camby and the rest of the Minutemen to the Final Four as he did Rose and the Tigers in 2007-08. He won the 1996 Naismith Coach of the Year as he did the 2008 version.

And then he left as he did after 2008.

Coincidentally, the 1995-96 house of cards came crashing down in similar fashion to the 2007-08 paper abode.

Yep, John Calipari is one of only four coaches to lead different programs to No. 1 seeds in the tournament.

He's also the only coach to have multiple Final Four appearances scrubbed from the history books. His UMass days were also marred by infraction from his star pupil (this time, Camby accepted money from nefarious agents).

In both instances, the coach has flown the coop scot-free.

Anyone who believes a college coach with Calipari's ego would've allowed his main attraction do anything without his knowledge is probably related to the wayward whistle-blower by blood or marriage.

Furthermore, actual ignorance isn't even a defense.

This man gets paid top dollar to know everything about the program he's supposed to be running. Inevitably, some of the smaller stuff will get lost in the shuffle—your future NBA star taking tens of thousands of dollars and the eligibility of your prized recruit don't qualify as "smaller stuff."

Sorry, "I didn't know" doesn't cut it—won't work for the Vatican or the Pope and it won't work for John.

There's no such thing as plausible deniability here. Not by a long shot.

Except there is. Was. Twice.

Everywhere John Calipari goes, he's hailed as if the past never happened. As if he's NOT leaving chalk-outlined basketball programs in his wake like Johnny left apple seed.

If he'd won this year's NCAA Tournament, the hero's welcome in Lexington and across the country would've been repugnant. Which is why we owe the Basketball Gods, Bob Huggins (himself no saint), and the West Virginia Mountaineers a standing ovation.

They conspired to deliver poetic justice less than a week after the NCAA failed to do so with the real thing.

Somewhere, the deceased Beatles' frontman is smiling.

**www.pva.org**