(02-14-2010 10:19 PM)3601 Wrote:  UMass NEVER won and NCAA tournament game before Calipari arrived in Amherst. They played in only one and that was in 1962.

Calipari practially performed a miracle taking them from where they were to becoming a legitimate national power over a five season span from 1991-1992 to 1995-1996.

This isn't a dig at UMass. It simply shows how incredible of a job Cal did at a school that has done virtually NOTHING in basketball except during his run their.

Keep in mind that Jack Leaman's UMass teams finished first in their conference 8 out of 9 years between 1967 and 1976 (same conference as UConn) and the NCAA still never invited us to the tournament. It was a different era. Two future NBA players and a future Hall of Famer by the name of Julius Erving weren't up to snuff, I guess. So no, UMass certainly didn't have a "national" program before Calipari, but it's not like we were confused about what to do with the big round orange ball. Cal came in at the absolute low point though. UMass had finished dead last something like 8 out of 10 years before he arrived, and at one point lost about 35 conference games in a row. But it had only been 10 years since our last post-season appearance (NIT) when Cal was hired. We've now gone longer than that without a NCAA appearance since Cal left. Point being, it's not quite the same thing as turning NJIT into a national power, though still one of the greatest program-building jobs ever.