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The Kentucky basketball coach would like the Southeastern Conference to move its conference tournament from March to November. He believes giving an automatic NCAA Tournament bid to the SEC tourney champion is meaningless.
“You know my stuff is so ridiculous that you say, ‘What?’” Calipari told reporters, via AL.com, Wednesday at the SEC spring meetings in Destin, Fla. “I said let’s not have a postseason tournament. Let’s have a preseason tournament where you’re guaranteed three games. We go somewhere and all the fans come in and we celebrate our league. We’ll have great games to start the year and we’ll do it prior to the year.
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“You have to do it in November,” Calipari added. “Play a game or two and then out of the gate, you have a conference tournament. You know you have it for one week. Maybe you have two sites in the same city. Maybe it’s in Atlanta. You’re doing it every year. Let’s all (have) our fans go to Atlanta and everything is geared for the SEC.”
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After Kentucky and Texas A&M tied for the regular-season title in 2015-16, Kentucky claimed the league’s automatic bid to the NCAA Tournament by beating the Aggies in the SEC championship game. Kentucky was rewarded with a No. 4 seed in the NCAA tourney while Texas A&M got a No. 3 seed. Calipari said the regular-season champion should get the automatic bid and it’s easy to see his point when it comes to power conferences like the SEC.
But holding a conference tourney in November would present some problems, especially in the football-crazed SEC.
