This Kentucky team that’s been ranked No. 1 literally every week never came to Nashville to destroy three out-manned opponents and act like it means something, folks assumed. They came to Nashville because it was a required step toward their ultimate goal of a national title, and nothing more. So they held the trophy after a second blowout of Arkansas in 16 days, if only because the alternative would’ve made for a publicly awkward scene. But these Wildcats were always going to leave the stage and walk directly to their locker room without cutting nets because that gesture would show they’re only going to celebrate success in a traditional way when they beat somebody on the first Monday in April and claim their school’s ninth national championship.
Or …
“Can I tell you honestly?” Calipari asked a studio host later that Sunday on national television, an hour or so after the Wildcats had returned home. “Honestly, we all forgot. We forgot. We walked off the court and someone said, ‘You forgot to cut down the nets.’ … Literally forgot. Just walked off the court. … We were trying to get on the plane to get back to the house.”
Earlier that Sunday, in the UK locker room, several players admitted the same — that they weren’t trying to send a message as much as they simply forgot to do anything other than what they’ve been doing all season; i.e., win a game and leave. To the extent that this was a mistake, it was an innocent mistake, and that’s when it genuinely registered with me for the first time that the rest of the nation, myself included, has spent a lot more time thinking big-picture about Kentucky than Kentucky has spent thinking big-picture about itself.
It started in the preseason with analysts insisting that, sooner or later, Calipari’s uniquely deep roster would cause him headaches because, you know, you just can’t keep that many elite talents — not to mention their parents — satisfied. We figured the emergence of point guard Tyler Ulis would create a situation between he and Andrew Harrison, and, almost certainly, Aaron Harrison would find himself in the middle of it. We assumed the pressure of trying to go undefeated would get to them. We assumed all sorts of things. But now here we are, late March, and the Wildcats are still in possession of a perfect record. And the issues most predicted they’d run into at some point have either been completely avoided or quickly diffused.
“What Cal has done with this team … it’s amazing,” said Kentucky athletic director Mitch Barnhart, the man who hired Calipari six years ago. “I’ve been in this business 33 years and never seen anything like it.”
Any routine Google search will return lists of college basketball’s greatest teams. There are rankings of outfits coached by John Wooden at UCLA, Adolph Rupp at Kentucky, Bob Knight at Indiana, Dean Smith at North Carolina, Jerry Tarkanian at UNLV, Mike Krzyzewski at Duke, so on and so forth, and how these Wildcats compare to those teams is probably an unfair conversation for a variety of reasons — most notably because the majority of those teams were led by elite upperclassmen, and elite upperclassmen are rarer than uncriticized block-charge calls in this era of college basketball. Still, it’s a conversation that’s taking place, and former CBS analyst Billy Packer might’ve framed things best.
“We have a different era of college basketball now,” Packer explained recently on The Tony Kornheiser Show. “Just to give you perspective in regard to Kentucky itself — as to whether you want to consider this the greatest Kentucky team, forget about the all-time teams — back in the late 40’s when they had Ralph Beard and Alex Groza, they won two straight national championships. They also, as a starting five, were the starting five of the [United States] Olympic [team] and won the 1948 [gold medal]. When Beard and Groza left college as three-time All-Americans — they’d won 30 games three years in a row, and Groza was the two-time MOP of the Final Four — they became a professional franchise with the Indianapolis Olympians. Beard and Groza made All-NBA First Team with George Mikan, Bob Davies, and Easy Ed Macauley. Could any player off this Kentucky team match that?”
Maybe.
But probably not.
So it’s likely a waste of time to try to compare this Kentucky team to the great teams of decades past because in decades past a college coach had three or four years to work with players and mold them into a team while Calipari is essentially limited to four months of coaching mostly freshmen and sophomores. Simply put, times have changed. But regardless of where you fall in that conversation, what we can all agree on now is that these Wildcats are probably the best team of the so-called one-and-done era, and that they have the most realistic shot of anybody, since 1991 UNLV made it to the Final Four with a perfect record, to actually finish undefeated and become college basketball’s first 40-0 national champions.
They’d also be the first team to go undefeated since 1976 Indiana.
Which inevitably leads to questions about 1976 Indiana.
For all the reasons stated above, comparing 1976 Indiana to 2015 Kentucky isn’t an apples-to-apples comparison. Indiana’s top five scorers consisted of four seniors (Scott May, Tom Abernathy, Quinn Buckner, Bobby Wilkerson) and one junior (Kent Benson) while Kentucky’s top five scorers consist of one junior (Willie Cauley-Stein), two sophomores (Aaron Harrison, Andrew Harrison) and two freshmen (Devin Booker, Karl-Anthony Towns). Combine that with the fact that May, Buckner, Wilkerson and Abernathy went No. 2, No. 7, No. 11 and No. 43 in the 1976 NBA Draft before Benson went No. 1 in the 1977 NBA Draft, and it’s difficult to argue against the idea that 1976 Indiana was just as talented as, if not more talented than, 2015 Kentucky. And, either way, we’re comparing elite 22 year-olds to elite 20 year-olds, which makes a huge difference. For context, think about the difference between Anthony Davis today and Anthony Davis two years ago. It’s massive.
Again, Packer explained this well.
“I’m not demeaning this [Kentucky] team at all, because I think it’s an entirely different era of basketball,” Packer said. “But let’s put something in perspective. The team Bob Knight had in 1976 — in those two years they went 63-1. Scott May was the second guy drafted in the NBA, Quinn Buckner was the seventh, Bobby Wilkinson was the 11th, and Kent Benson, the next year, was the No. 1 guy drafted. They were juniors and seniors. They had played for Knight for four years … [and] … there is no way possible that a team that experienced, that mature, that outstanding athletically in any way, shape, or form would’ve had a problem with this Kentucky team. Being coached by Knight for four years, when John Calipari basically has assembled a group of kids in four months, I don’t think you want to compare.”
Fair enough.
So let’s stop comparing 1976 Indiana to 2015 Kentucky and instead focus on whether the Wildcats can and will win four more games to become college basketball’s first 40-0 champs.
Can they win four more games?Of course they can. Because even though the Wildcats technically do, as West Virginia’s Devin Smith pointed out, “put their drawers on the same way” as any other team, the truth is the bodies Kentucky slides into those drawers are bigger, stronger, more athletic and generally better equipped to win basketball games. There are just more exceptional bodies in those drawers than any other college team has possessed in some time.
That’s why Kentucky’s players mostly chuckle when they hear television analysts talking about the secrets to beating them because there aren’t really any secrets. The only way to beat them is to outplay them, and, as anybody who has played them understands, it’s very, very difficult to outplay them.
“It is funny for us,” said Trey Lyles, a freshman forward for the Wildcats. “When we’re playing to the best of our abilities, it’s really hard for any team to make a gameplan against us because we have so many weapons on the floor.”
As for the 40-0 talk, here’s the deal: There’s no evidence these players have been focused on it any more than they were focused on the ladders under the baskets in Bridgestone Arena two Sundays ago. To Calipari’s credit, they’ve genuinely taken everything on a game-to-game basis, but now they’re in a position where their goal for themselves (a championship) intersects with everybody else’s goal for them (a 40-0 season). They can’t accomplish the first without doing the second. So, yes, 40-0 is now their goal.
Will they win four more games?I think so, yes. The Wildcats are a double-digit favorite over West Virginia and will be similarly favored if they advance to the Elite Eight, regardless of the opponent. Games against any combination of Arizona, Wisconsin, Duke, Gonzaga and Utah in Indianapolis could theoretically present challenges unseen to date. But the smart money remains on Kentucky.
Either way, John Calipari could, within weeks, be elected to the Naismith Hall of Fame and become the first person to coach a Division 1 men’s basketball team to a 40-0 record that would secure his second national title. That’s strong. Needless to say, among those rooting for him is his boss … Mitch Barnhart, who believes, deep down, that Calipari has forever wanted all of this even if he’s done a masterful job of downplaying it throughout the season.
“I don’t want to ever speak for Cal, but I think legacies are something that are special for everybody,” Barnhart said. “Going 40-0 would be special for his legacy, and I’d like to see it happen. And though his goal has always been just to get these kids a championship, now, to do that, you have to go 40-0. Now you really don’t have a choice. So I’d like to see it happen for him because what he’s done with this team has just been an amazing thing to watch.”
