Throughout his coaching career, whether at UMass or Memphis or Kentucky or Arkansas, John Calipari has built a reputation for himself as one of college basketball's foremost iconoclasts — and one of its boldest truth-tellers. While other coaches and other programs were concerned with the pieties of amateurism and afraid to ruffle any feathers, only Cal was prepared to tell it like it was, cutting through the bureaucratic BS of the college game and telling things like they really were.
Of course, ironically enough, that reputation was something of a fiction itself. In reality, Cal has never been all that concerned with telling the truth; he's concerned with telling whatever version of the truth most benefits him in a given moment, whether that's trying to land a new job or a new five-star recruit. Occasionally those two things overlap, but when they do, it's purely coincidental.
Which brings us to Monday, when the Arkansas head man dropped a pipe bomb ahead of his Razorbacks' SEC Tournament opener against South Carolina.
"I don't care about the conference tournament, which is why we won it so many times," Calipari told On3 Sports. "The tournament that matters is the NCAA Tournament ... if you're gonna get to the finals, win, or don't get to the finals because you're gonna be exhausted ... Let's play well, and try to improve our seed."
Like a lot of things Calipari says, there's some truth to it. And also like a lot of things Calipari says, he's trying to protect his own hide.
John Calipari wants everyone to know he really couldn't care less about the SEC Tournament
It's been a bumpy debut for Coach Cal in Fayetteville, to say the least. The Hogs dropped their first five games of conference play, then lost star freshman Boogie Fland to injury. It seemed like things might go fully pear-shaped, but Calipari, to his credit, rallied the troops, going 8-5 to finish the regular season including wins over Kentucky, Missouri and Mississippi State.
That late-season surge should be enough to get Arkansas squarely on the right side of the bubble, and even avoid a trip to Dayton for the First Four. But it wasn't enough to get the Razorbacks out of the first round in Nashville, and with a gauntlet ahead, it's no wonder that Calipari is immediately engaging in some expectation management.
Which is all this is, really. Calipari knows that his fan base has begun getting its hopes up again, and he really rather preferred when Arkansas could play free and easy as underdogs with nothing to lose. He also knows that winning four games in four days is an arduous task, especially in this conference, and he doesn't want anyone crying to him if and when the Hogs get eliminated this week. Calipari is as competitive as anyone in the sport, and he's more than happy to take a victory lap when his team is on top; don't buy the notion that he's taking any tournament lightly.