“HAVE you news of my boy Pat? ”
Not this tide.
“When d’you think that he’ll come back?”
Not with this wind blowing, and this tide.
“Has any one else had word of him?”
Not this tide.
For what is sunk will hardly swim,
Not with this wind blowing, and this tide.
“Oh, dear, what comfort can I find?”
None this tide,
Nor any tide,
Except he did not shame his kind—
Not even with that wind blowing, and that tide.
Then hold your head up all the more,
This tide,
And every tide;
Because he was the son you bore,
And gave to that wind blowing and that tide.
This poem, My Boy Jack by Rudyard Kipling, best captures how I feel in the wake of Notre Dame’s 66-68 loss to Kentucky in the Elite Eight on Saturday. I swapped the word “Jack” for “Pat,” obviously, but otherwise left everything the same as from Kipling’s pen. He wrote the poem, evidently, as a sort of elegy for his son, Jack, who was lost in 1915 at the Battle of Loos. I can’t ignore the visual and auditory similarity between “Loos” and “loss” and “lost” and lost is how I feel, some thirty-odd hours on. I feel that with every passing moment, the magic that Pat Connaughton and Jerian Grant and Coach Brey cast for and upon us this season is slipping inexorably away, growing more and more distant, quieter and quieter forever.
The Palm Sunday gospel reading had me thinking about the Irish, too. It reminded me that, if only for forty-odd hours, the bad guys can win. You get the sense that Pontius Pilate really didn’t want to kill Jesus, much less crucify him, but he played his part and at three o’clock, the Lord breathed his last and, if only for forty-odd hours, the bad guys won.
I think it disingenuous to compare Kentucky basketball to the mob that, stirred up by the Sanhedrin, brayed for Barabbas to be set free. They’re just kids playing a game. And I’m certainly not comparing Coach Brey and his cagers to Jesus or suggesting that they played the part of sacrificial lambs. I am however suggesting that if you can take away larger stories from one basketball game, take away this: Coach John Calipari is a fair representation of what’s wrong with college basketball and Coach Mike Brey is a fair representation of what’s right.
Coach Calipari has left in his wake vacated seasons and academic and recruiting violations so outrageous that Caligula would have blushed. Coach Brey, on the other hand, took a squad led by two seniors, the aforementioned Grant and Connaughton, to the Elite Eight and an ACC Championship the season after the University for which he coaches suspended Grant in 2013 for academic issues. Coach Brey didn’t complain. He said that Grant would turn out to be “a great Notre Dame story.” When John Calipari was asked how he missed all his players at UMass walking around with diamond studs in their ears, a clear sign of NCAA violations, he simply shrugged and said, “I don’t walk around carrying these jewelers’ glasses.”
Calipari’s history makes it impossible to believe that the data Kentucky supplies to the NCAA is valid, but even with jiggered numbers, there’s something rotten in the state of Kentucky. The NCAA came up with a metric called “Graduation Success Rate” which, in its on mind, provides a more accurate picture of a program’s, well, graduation success rate. Its basic premise is that it doesn’t count transfers who are in good academic standing when they transfer against a program’s graduation success rate. According to the NCAA, Kentucky’s GSR is eighty-nine percent (89%). Notre Dame’s is one hundred percent (100%). When you look at the Federal Graduation Rate, which basically asks “did a particular freshman graduate in six years?” Notre Dame still hits eighty-nine percent (89%). Kentucky is an eye-catching forty percent (40%).
The NCAA has never caught Calipari in the same manner that Captain Rennault never caught a gambler in Casablanca. Calipari, much like gambling, is simply too good for business. Mike Brey may just be too good for words. But the business side is catching up. For example, Saturday’s game was the most viewed basketball game in the history of cable television. Whether that’s just basketball junkies who tuned in to see if Kentucky would remain undefeated I can’t say, but you can’t discount the power of the Notre Dame brand.
So until next season, all we can do is look for our boy Pat. And our boy Jerian. We can go down to the St. Joe and watch the tide and the leaves as they spin and float their way by. And neither Pat nor Jerian will be on this tide nor on the next. But we can be proud and sad of them and all that they did for us and for Our Lady’s University. And we will hold up our heads on this tide and every tide because they were loyal sons we gave to that hardwood floor and that tide.
Hating Hurricanes Since 1990.
Bayou Irish is a Jersey boy and Double Domer who fell under New Orleans' spell in 1995. He's been through Katrina and fourteen years in the Coast Guard, so we cut him some slack, mostly in the form of HLS-subsidized sazeracs. But, when he's not face down on the bar and communing with the ghosts of Faulkner and Capote at the Carousel Bar in the Hotel Monteleone, he's our man in SEC-land, doing his best to convince everyone around him that Graduation Success Rate is a better indicator of success than the number of MNC's won in the last five years.
- Finding Flaws in a Diamond: Clemson’s Rushing Offense - December 17, 2018
- Why Nobody Will Cotton to Notre Dame - December 3, 2018
- Irish Finish Regular Season Perfect 12-0 - November 26, 2018
What a heartbreaking loss; but an exceptional effort put forth by the team. This one will certainly sting for a while but what an awesome season.
John: thanks for reading and for commenting. I couldn’t agree more.
Very thoughtful reflection on the season, Bayou Irish. I too was/am devastated by the loss, but I’m optimistic about what this season may do for our future. Certainly this season went a long way towards establishing that Notre Dame can compete at the absolute highest level. With Brey at the helm & perhaps some top recruits to follow, this season may not be an aberration.
Bob: thanks for reading and for commenting. I don’t know if NDMBB has ever enjoyed a season as meaningful as this one and I think it could very well turn into one of the more important, if not the most important, in the program’s history. An ACC championship is massive in the world of basketball. Brey’s reputational renaissance is another great thing. Winning the whole thing is unbelievably challenging. ND showed, however, that it can be done by doing it the right way.
I’ve posted on these boards, mostly during football season, as I grew up a UK basketball and ND football fan. I’ll start by saying Saturday night was a great game and ND executed the exact game plan needed to beat Kentucky and was the exact team to do it. Wisconsin will try to copy it (just as ND copied Florida and Georgia) but I don’t see anyone doing it better than ND did Saturday night.
But, please stick to what you know. You’re entitled to an opinion but ND fans should be above making hyperbolic attacks on teams that are at the top of their sport. No program is without its problems (Lizzy Seeburg, Declan Sullivan), but what John Calipari is doing at Kentucky is admirable. He took the UK job only a couple years after the NBA implemented the “one and done” rule and that has benefited him, no question. But let’s not just stop there, let’s ask why? That rule forces marketable and potentially highly compensated 17 and 18 year-olds to choose between sitting out a year, playing somewhere overseas or playing for an NCAA team. ESPN and the NCAA have marketed itself in such a manner that it presents these kids with the best option. What John Calipari does is essentially manage them for a year in a way that best positions them for success at the next level. I could go on about this but I’ll just leave it at this. He has been at UK for 6 years. He has recruited (out of high school and a couple by transfer) 38 players (most scholarship but some walk-ons). 15 have already been drafted by the NBA. 3 transferred (Ryan Harrow who had a good year at Georgia State, Kyle Wiltjer who had a good year at Gonzaga, and Stacey Poole, who went to Georgia Tech and you would know better than I what came of him), 4 have already graduated and 4 will graduate this year (Alex Poythress in only 3 years plus he will be drafted). The other 12 are underclassmen on this year’s team, most of which will probably also be drafted. Calling the team and school out on skewed “graduation rate” statistics, and then not giving the details is misleading.
Hi jdthom1: thanks for reading and for commenting. I appreciate your thoughtful comment, but I honestly cannot believe that you used the words “John Calipari” and “admirable” in the same sentence. I guess we have a perhaps impossible-to-bridge difference of opinion as to what the role of a college coach, in any sport, is. That said, whatever I wrote, and it was enough to earn a “hyperbolic” badge, pales in comparison to what, for example, Dan Shaughnessy wrote in the Boston Globe on March 7, 2015, calling him, among other sobriquets, “a glorified AAU bag man.” The NCAA’s self-invented metrics, GSR and the Academic Progress Rate (APR), I believe were created to sustain the fallacy of the student-athlete across college sport. That’s the reason I chose to include reference to the Federal Graduation Rate, which, too, is flawed, given that, for example, it does not account for players who are drafted early but return to college to get their degree after the six-year period. If there’s a flaw in my piece, it’s that I failed to note or otherwise explain that the most recent FGR and GSR numbers come from the 2007 freshman year cohort, two years before Calipari arrived at Kentucky. That said, if you look at Memphis, his previous school, their GSR/FGR numbers for the years he coached there are appalling: the highest GSR, 67, was achieved in 2008-09 based on the 2002 cohort. The 2000-2007 cohorts have not achieved a FGR higher than 55 and average 37.8%. In his first two years at Kentucky, the attrition rate of his freshman classes was 67% and 83.3%, respectively. That he manages the “one-and-done” system well is of really no moment to me as we are, after all, talking about student-athletes.
And since you threw it in the water, I’ll rise to your Seeburg/Sullivan bait for a moment. Shame on you.
“ND fans should be above making hyperbolic attacks so I’m going to bring up two of the worst tragedies that happened to ND in recent memory and use them to make a point that has absolutely nothing to do with graduation rates” <- you, basically.
You’re right. That’s kind of the point. Those two tragedies, taken out of context by someone with an agenda to attack ND football can be and have been used to leap to misleading allegations and conclusions. If I went too far and personally offended anyone by bringing them up in the comments here, I apologize.
But the larger point was this: You don’t have to attack the opponent to take pride in the season ND basketball just had. The ACC tournament championship was a huge deal and had they gotten the win Saturday I think they win it all. If Kentucky takes care of business and finishes 40-0, this will be THE game everyone talks about when they talk about this UK basketball team and this basketball season. That is a special place in history.
Hi jdthom1: thanks for reading and for commenting. I appreciate your thoughtful comment, but I honestly cannot believe that you used the words “John Calipari” and “admirable” in the same sentence. I guess we have a perhaps impossible-to-bridge difference of opinion as to what the role of a college coach, in any sport, is. That said, whatever I wrote, and it was enough to earn a “hyperbolic” badge, pales in comparison to what, for example, Dan Shaughnessy wrote in the Boston Globe on March 7, 2015, calling him, among other sobriquets, “a glorified AAU bag man.” The NCAA’s self-invented metrics, GSR and the Academic Progress Rate (APR), I believe were created to sustain the fallacy of the student-athlete across college sport. That’s the reason I chose to include reference to the Federal Graduation Rate, which, too, is flawed, but ultimately has, as its sina qua non, a requirement that the student graduate. If there’s a flaw in my piece, it’s that I failed to note or otherwise explain that the most recent FGR and GSR numbers come from the 2007 freshman year cohort, two years before Calipari arrived at Kentucky. But, if you look at Memphis, his previous stop, its GSR/FGR numbers for the years he coached there are appalling: the highest GSR, 67, was achieved in 2008-09 based on the 2002 cohort. The 2000-2007 cohorts have not achieved a FGR higher than 55 and average 37.8%. In his first two years at Kentucky, the attrition rate of his freshman classes was 67% and 83.3%, respectively. That he manages the “one-and-done” system well is of really no moment to me as we are, after all, talking about student-athletes.
And since you threw it in the water, I’ll rise to your Seeburg/Sullivan bait for a moment. Shame on you.
As I mentioned in the previous comment, if I personally offended anyone in these comments, I apologize. But what you are doing is essentially attacking these “student athletes” even though you begin by saying they’re “just kids.” That paints all University of Kentucky students and alumni, myself included, in a poor light. This is not Alabama football or Louisville basketball where kids who clearly cannot cut it academically are recruited and then run off campus. This is not North Carolina where the students don’t have to go to class.
I’m not defending what Calipari did before he came to Kentucky as I did not follow him and I am not familiar. I know what he has done since he’s been in Lexington. Ultimately, you’re right that we have a disagreement about college athletics as a whole. I have been a Brian Kelly supporter but my main criticism of him doesn’t relate to on the field performance. I have a problem with how he “recruits” juniors who are contemplating entering the draft. ND football will be better with Ronnie Stanley next year but I’m not sure Ronnie Stanley benefits as much. So far, I have reconciled this by telling myself that football is different than basketball as there are many more risks of long term physical injury.
Again, see my response to Ryan’s comment for my larger point. Saturday was a great game and I hate to see such bitterness in the loss.
As for the shaming, I’ll just do what you did and remind you that many in the national media called for Swarbrick and Kelly’s termination and/or resignation as a result of those events. I do not personally have enough information to defend those potentially responsible but I assume the family and their legal counsel did. I’ve made my apologies.