Few things could have wiped the smiles off the faces of John Wall, DeMarcus Cousins, Patrick Patterson and Eric Bledsoe when they were talking about their Southeastern Conference awards Tuesday.The one constant that seemed to drop the jaws of the players was the news that their commander in chief, head coach John Calipari, wasn’t selected as SEC Coach of the Year by the league’s coaches. “What?” said a stunned Patterson upon learning the winner. “I’m shocked. I felt Coach Cal was going to get it for him being a first-year head coach with the team that we had being freshmen, young and inexperienced, with players leaving and a few people returning. The accomplishments that he’s done this year, in and out of the regular season, I thought he would have got it. I’m extremely surprised.”Vanderbilt head coach Kevin Stallings was tabbed the SEC Coach of the Year by the conference’s 12 coaches for the second time in his Commodore tenure. Stallings had the credentials to win the award by leading Vandy to a 12-4 record in SEC play, the most victories since winning 14 during the 1992-93 season.That work aside, the UK players felt like an SEC championship, 29-2 record and likely No. 1 seed in the NCAA Tournament warranted Calipari’s name on the mythical hardware.”He did a great job this year but I feel like Cal should have gotten it,” Wall said. “He didn’t get it and that’s OK because we’ll just keep playing basketball. He did a lot of hard work being a first-year coach, bringing in six new players and having seven returning players he had to start from scratch with this team.”Had Calipari won it, UK would have won all three major SEC awards, as Wall and Cousins were named Player of the Year and Freshman of the Year, respectively. Coupled with the women’s SEC awards sweep — Victoria Dunlap won Player of the Year, A’dia Mathies captured Freshman of the Year and Matthew Mitchell earned Coach of the Year — the UK basketball programs nearly swept all six major awards.UK’s domination in the SEC awards is one reason Cousins believes Calipari didn’t get the nod.”I guess they didn’t want the whole conference to have Kentucky going across it so they mixed it up a little bit,” Cousins said.Cousins took the news lightheartedly, though, and admitted he didn’t even know who Stallings was when he learned of the Calipari snub.”John was like, ‘Who is that?’ ” Cousins said. “I said, ‘I don’t know, who is it?’ I thought it was the coach from like Georgia or something. I don’t know. That was crazy.”No one knows exactly how Calipari feels on the lack of recognition, and chances are we’ll never find out.”He’s not going to say he’s mad and we’re not going to say he’s mad but he should have gotten the award,” Wall said. “Coach Cal, he’ll never tell you. He’ll keep it to himself and respect whoever got the award.”Calipari can take solace in the fact that he’s still a strong candidate for Associated Press SEC Coach of the Year and National Coach of the Year. “I’m sure he’s just going to focus on getting that championship,” Patterson said.

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