John Calipari ejected less than three minutes into Saturday’s win
The strangest part of the tantrum John Calipari threw Saturday are the circumstances that preceded it.
It occurred less than three minutes into Kentucky’s 89-62 victory and immediately after a foul was called on South Carolina.
When referees whistled Gamecocks forward Mindaugas Kacinas for an over-the-back foul as he fought for an offensive rebound, Calipari was subsequently hit with a technical foul. TV cameras did not catch the initial exchange between Calipari and referee Doug Sirmons, but it’s possible the Kentucky coach was still upset about the lack of an over-the-back call on a previous possession when South Carolina’s Michael Carrera scored a put-back.
As soon as Calipari received his first technical, he approached Sirmons at the scorer’s table and shouted at him nearly face-to-face, resulting in an ejection. Enraged and wild-eyed, Calipari had to be held back by guards Jamal Murray and Isaiah Briscoe for several seconds before regaining his composure and exiting the floor as jeering South Carolina fans waved goodbye to him.
The abrupt ejection added to Sirmons’ reputation for having a quick trigger, one that several former coaches mentioned on Twitter afterward.
The emotionally charged scene was a bizarre start to one of the biggest SEC games of the college basketball season. Kentucky (18-6, 8-3) and South Carolina (21-3, 8-3) entered Saturday’s game in a three-way tie for first place in the SEC along with LSU.
Calipari has coached in more than 800 college basketball games since 1989 and had only been ejected three times prior to Saturday. He was ejected once at UMass and twice at Kentucky, most recently late in a 2014 road loss at South Carolina.
Could Calipari’s early outburst on Saturday have been a calculated attempt to get his team to show some fight on the road? Or a way of manipulating referees into giving Kentucky a favorable whistle against a South Carolina team that thrives on getting to the foul line?
Whether it was planned or not, Calipari’s ejection certainly brought out the best in his team.
Kentucky players cheered on the bench when Carrera missed three of his four free throws after Calipari’s ejection. Then the Wildcats played inspired basketball the rest of the game, opening up an 18-point lead late in the first half and expanding it to as many as 34 points in the second half.
Tyler Ulis was once again the best player on the floor Saturday, scoring 27 points and dishing out 12 assists. Jamal Murray scored 26 points on 21 shots and Marcus Lee anchored a frontcourt that did a credible job keeping South Carolina off the offensive boards even with Alex Poythress out due to injury.
Kentucky also had a couple of memorable dunks as the lead swelled to insurmountable proportions. The first was this off-the-glass alley-oop from Ulis to Lee.
The second was this soaring one-handed dunk by Murray.
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Jeff Eisenberg is the editor of The Dagger on Yahoo Sports. Have a tip? Email him at [email protected] or follow him on Twitter!
