John Calipari might have to consider new approach given recent tournament struggles

Following his team's stunning opening-round loss to No. 14 seed Oakland on Thursday night, Kentucky head coach John Calipari seemed to indicate he might need to take a new approach in building his roster. Even if he does not want to.

This is because his current formula -- building young teams through recruiting freshmen -- seems to be a thing of the past in the current NCAA environment. Now, transfers and veteran rosters rule the game. 

It is impacting how his team is performing in the tournament.

Following Thursday's loss, Calipari is just 1-4 in Kentucky's past five tournament games. He seems to be aware that the lack of experience on his rosters might be hurting.

"I'll look at other ways that we can do stuff, but, you know, there's -- this thing here, it's a different animal," Calipari said after Thursday's game, via ESPN. 

"We've been able to help so many kids and win so many games and Final Fours, national titles and all this stuff, win league championships with young guys. It's changed on us. All of a sudden it's gotten really old. So we're playing teams that our average age is 19, their average age is 24 and 25. So do I change because of that? Maybe add a couple older guys to supplement."

Kentucky is one of the nation's top college basketball programs and has an extremely high expectation for winning. Tournament winning.

Winning a lot of games in the regular season and then getting bounced early by lower-seeded teams (and in this case, a double-digit seed) is not going to fly with fans, boosters or the program. 

The only thing that might be saving Calipari for now is the insanely high buyout in his contract.

But even Kentucky might have its limits if tournament success does not start coming very soon. The harsh reality is that Kentucky has made it out of the second round just once since 2019 and has lost to both a No. 14 seed and a No. 15 seed during that stretch. One time is bad luck. It happens. Multiple times is a trend.