Ask just about anyone in the city of Memphis who their favorite college basketball team is and you’ll get two answers: the hometown Tigers and whoever plays the Kentucky Wildcats.
On Saturday in the East Regional final, West Virginia made Memphis fans happy when the Mountaineers knocked off top seed Kentucky 73-66 to earn a Final Four berth.
For Memphis Tigers fans, the most important thing that resulted from West Virginia’s win is the fact that John Calipari and his Kentucky Wildcats got knocked out of the tournament.
Memphis fans saw the potential for a national championship get decimated when Calipari made his decision to take the Kentucky job last year, leaving the Tigers basketball program in a momentary state of disarray.
After Calipari left Memphis, he took all but one of his assistant coaches and the bulk of the best recruiting class ever assembled.
The way Calipari left the program had Tigers’ fans feeling nothing but contempt for their former coach.
Ironically, West Virginia coach Bob Huggins was a long-time target of Memphis fans during his 16-year coaching tenure at the University of Cincinnati.
Huggins drew the ire of Tigers fans like no other in all of college basketball, but after the Mountaineers’ win he might be the second most popular coach in Memphis following Josh Pastner.
The formula Huggins has used throughout his coaching career was employed against the Wildcats on Saturday.
The Mountaineers played exceptional defense and forced the younger, inexperienced Wildcats into one of their worst shooting performances of the season.
Kentucky only managed 34 percent from the field, including an abysmal 4 of 32 from 3-point range.
The Achilles heel of Calipari coached teams reared its ugly head too, as Kentucky shot 16 of 29 from the free throw line.
Calipari has often stated that he isn’t concerned with free throw shooting, but his 2008 Memphis team lost the national championship against Kansas in part because of the Tigers inability to make free throws in the last two minutes of the game.
The pain of losing that game still lingers for Memphis fans, but some of that disappointment turned to smiles as the Wildcats missed shot after shot against West Virginia’s 1-3-1 zone defense.
Huggins, whose last appearance in the Final Four was in 1992 when he coached Cincinnati, improved his record against Calipari to 8-1 with the win.
The Mountaineers are in the Final Four for the first time since 1959. That Mountaineers’ team was led by Jerry West, long before he became the NBA logo.
West Virginia’s win over Kentucky was the ninth time the Wildcats have been bounced from the NCAA tournament as a No.1 seed since 1979, tied for most with North Carolina.
For Calipari and his Kentucky team, the future has many questions.
With Patrick Patterson graduating and freshmen John Wall, DeMarcus Cousins and potentially Eric Bledsoe departing early for the NBA, the Wildcats will have to recover from this loss, rebuild their roster and hope another opportunity to win a national championship presents itself next season.
Meanwhile, Pastner has assembled the nation’s best recruiting class and expectations are high for the Memphis Tigers next season.
And for one night, or maybe even several nights, the city of Memphis will take glee in Calipari’s failure, and it’s doubtful any apologies are forthcoming.
