Calipari: 'I don't know how Iona gets in instead of Drexel'
Dragon Ball is a blog about Drexel University sports, with a particular emphasis on basketball.
Calipari: 'I don’t know how Iona gets in instead of Drexel'
Kentucky coach John Calipari, whose team is the No. 1 overall seed in the NCAA Tournament, has plenty of empathy for Drexel.
Calipari is close friends with Drexel coach Bruiser Flint, his former assistant who replaced him as head coach at the University of Massachusetts.
So with that background, we got on a conference call and asked Calipari his opinion on Drexel’s snub, and his reaction was not surprising.
“I was really disappointed,” Calipari said “I thought the St. Bonaventure game really hurt them.”
The NCAA selection committee said on Sunday evening that Oral Roberts, Nevada, Miami and Drexel, Seton Hall and Mississippi State were the last six teams considered. It is unclear what order the teams were in.
One of those six would have been in had St. Bonaventure not won the Atlantic-10 tournament, thus earning the league’s fourth spot.
Many fans of teams they felt should have earned a berth are criticizing the inclusion of Iona into the field and Calipari led the chorus.
“I don’t know how Iona gets in instead of Drexel,” he said. “I was really disappointed.”
Calipari even talked about Drexel’s comeback that just came short in the Colonial Athletic Association championship, a 59-56 loss to VCU at the Richmond Coliseum. Drexel overcame a 16- point halftime deficit and missed a last-second three-pointer that would have sent the game into overtime.
“They even came back in a game on a neutral court which was basically a home game for VCU, had a chance to win after being down 16,” Calipari said. “I don’t know what else you have to do.”
Calipari said he talked to Flint on Sunday night and no doubt he expressed these opinions.
“I am disappointed because they deserved it, the program deserved it and I hope they have a great run in the NIT,” Calipari said.
Dragons got jobbed.— thewiseone
The NCAA selection stooges forgot that this is the year of the Dragon. Drexel can't just pick it's OOC schedule without the other teams agreeing to play them. Based on this year's selections, it seems that it would be better to lose all of your OOC games against allegedly tougher opponents. So maybe, in order to get good teams to agree to play, just have a handshake agreement to lose those games so you will have a good RPI and those teams won't have their NCAA bids placed at risk. Or maybe it's just that the NCAA committed feel the other bubble teams will just make the NCAA more money than Drexel would.— jp8899- This from a guy who said on two different networks last night that he hadn't seen the brackets. I guess he took a crash course after he got off the air and came up with all these opinions. I wonder how many times he saw Drexel and/or Iona play this season?— fightins4ever
- CAA sends schools to Final 4s. BCS schools dont dig that, lets get another MAAC school in there.— woodenships
- I assume Calipari's outrage means that he'll be helping Bruiser out by playing at the DAC next year.— arn1010
