By Keith Taylor
Kentucky Today
John Calipari doesn’t lose very often in the Southeastern Conference Tournament.
In his tenure as coach of the Wildcats, Calipari has won six tournament titles and compiled an impressive 23-4 mark. The Kentucky coach has led Kentucky to the championship game eight times in 10 appearances but it will take a long climb for the Wildcats to achieve the same success this season.
Kentucky (9-15) is the No. 8 seed and opens the five-day event at noon Thursday against Mississippi State at Bridgestone Arena in Nashville. To earn an automatic bid to the NCAA Tournament, the Wildcats will need to win four straight games.
Calipari’s success in the tournament gives the Wildcats a boost and sophomore forward Keion Brooks said the players will rely heavily on his experience this week.
“When he’s been through it before and went through these tournaments and won plenty of games and won the tournament multiple times, you know the man who is leading you through the fire knows what he’s doing,” he said. “That gives us extreme confidence going into it.”
The postseason tournament will mark the first for Brooks after last year’s event was called off because of the ongoing pandemic. Brooks said the Wildcats have to be “ready for war every single time we step out on the court.”
“We know what position we’re in and we know what we have to do to get it done,” he said. “It’s not going to be easy. We know it’s going to be difficult. But our coaching staff has put together game plans to help us succeed and help us be the best on the court. We have to go out there and execute, go out there, and fight and go out there and give it all we’ve got.”
A year ago, Kentucky was the top seed in the SEC Tournament before it was called off because of the pandemic. Brooks recalled how everything transpired prior to the cancelation of the yearly event, which resulted in a total shutdown of all collegiate sports last spring.
“The night before it was canceled, we all had a pretty good feeling we were going to get shut down,” Brooks recalled. “We went to our scheduled shootaround the next morning. I officially knew it was over once we went to shootaround and Cal didn’t say anything for the whole hour we had on the court. He just let us shoot around and do whatever. He called us in and said, ‘They’re canceling the tournament. Possibly going to cancel the NCAA Tournament as well.’”
Brooks said it proved to be a learning experience and helped the team handle an unprecedented regular season.
“It made me put things in perspective and try not to take things for granted,” he said. “It’s easy to just think that every day I can get up and play basketball with no worries, but once the tournament was taken away from us, and then me dealing with the injury, the game was taken away from me for a while. It’s difficult, but God puts things in your way that you can handle, testing your strength. I got through it and now have another challenge ahead with four games in four days, if we can do it. So, let’s go make it happen.”
Now that the tournament is a full go for the first time in two years, Brooks said the Wildcats are prepared for the task at hand added the venture resembles a “business trip.”
“We’re out here to win four games in four days. I don’t see what other attraction or anything else you would want to go when we’ve got the task in front of us that we do.”
Gametracker: Kentucky vs. Mississippi State, noon, Thursday. TV/Radio: SEC Network, UK Radio Network.
Keith Taylor is sports editor for Kentucky Today. Reach him at keith.taylor@kentuckytoday.com.