The John Calipari era in
The last item on that list was supposed to be
different. Perfection was supposed to be the coup de grĂ¢ce for Kentucky . Forty wins and
no losses: the unreachable fruit that only Cal 's Cats could grab, and the giant middle
finger to the face of anyone with a problem. Instead, it was 38-1 -- good
enough to be stuck somewhere between 2013-14 Wichita State
and 1990-91 UNLV, and forever locked out of the home of those who hoisted the
hardwood on the first Monday in April.
As is the case with any life-altering heartbreak, Big
Blue Nation will never be able to fully rid itself of the scar that came with
Slotting UK
at No. 1 has become the safe play for any preseason top 25 countdown, and with
good reason. The Wildcats under Calipari have only really made preseason
prognosticators look silly once, when a subpar national freshman class and a
season-ending injury to star center Nerlens Noel left Kentucky finishing the 2012-13 season in the
NIT. Outside of that, Cal
has led the Cats to five Elite Eights, four Final Fours, two national title
games and brought home the program's eighth NCAA championship. A healthy run at
No. 9 figures to start on Nov. 13.
While the subject may rear its head again if they beat
reigning national champion Duke on Nov. 17, From the first day of the 2014-15 season, the overwhelming consensus was that a "great" team was going to win the national championship. There were five or six teams that appeared to fit that mold, and it would have been extremely surprising if one of those squads didn't wind up claiming the title. One of them did. It just wasn't
The sport's landscape would appear to be more navigable
in 2015-16. There is no overly apparent dividing line between the group of
teams who should rule the season and those who are merely staring up in
envy. For Kentucky ,
a squad with yet another loaded class of newcomers, a returning starter at the
most key of positions on a Calipari team, and a couple battle-tested bigs, this
is an appealing setup.
Timing isn't everything in college basketball, but it's
more important than it is in any other major American sport. Overwhelmingly
positive or negative work that took four months to comprise can be completely
wiped away by one or two good or bad weeks in March. In keeping with that
theme, improved timing might be more important than an improved team when it
comes to Projected Lineup
PG Tyler Ulis Sophomore
SG Jamal Murray
Freshman
SF Isaiah Briscoe Freshman
PF Skal Labissiere Freshman
C Marcus Lee Junior
Key reserves: G Dominique Hawkins (Sophomore), F
Alex Poythress (Senior), F Derek Willis (Junior), G Charles Matthews
(Freshman), G Mychal Mulder (Junior), F Tai Wynyard (Freshman), C Isaac
Humphries (Freshman)
How Kentucky
can succeed: Let their latest dose of soon-to-be millionaires do their thing
Nothing that
Where Karl-Anthony
Towns , Willie
Cauley-Stein, Trey Lyles and Devin Booker exited, Skal Labissiere, Jamal
Murray, Isaiah Briscoe and Tyler Ulis enter. Think about that: four players
from the same program were all lottery picks in the same draft, and that same
program is sitting here as the projected No. 1 team in college basketball for
the very next season. The fact that we don't find this occurrence even the
least bit strange anymore might be even more insane than the actual phenomenon itself.
Any team that can count itself among the most talented
in the country is going to enjoy a high level of success, and Kentucky appears
once again to be loaded with players who will realize their lifelong dreams at
next June's NBA Draft.
Recently cleared Labissiere has been at No. 1 or No. 2
on just about every 2016 NBA mock draft since their inception.
If you're looking for comparisons between this squad and
the 2012 one which cut down the nets in New Orleans ,
there's this: Calipari has had just one Kentucky
team that has received significant production from a senior, the national
championship team which saw Darius Miller average just under 10 points per
game. This year's team figures to receive a similar boost from Poythress, who
was never expected to be around this long, but who now finds himself as the
first Calipari recruit to play four years at Kentucky .
The other major parallel is that this team will allow Calipari
to get back to letting his guys get up and down the court, a style which was
noticeably lacking the past two seasons with the more halfcourt-oriented How Kentucky loses early: A culture clash finally goes down in Lexington
There is no lack of evidence to support the widely-held belief that the egos attached to the highest-profile basketball recruits in the AAU era have gotten out of control. With that being the case, maybe the most remarkable aspect of what Calipari has been able to do at UK is that he's brought together the cream of the recruiting crop and never seemed to have much of an issue with his players coming together to pursue one common goal.
There has been nothing so far this summer or fall to indicate that this trend is going to be broken in 2015-16, but if you're looking for a reason why the Cats might be unsuccessful this season, that's about all there is. Maybe Lee, Poythress and Ulis don't take kindly to the 2015 crew once they start stealing the spotlight. Maybe Willis finally freaks out over being a former highly-rated recruit who gets treated like a glorified walk-on. Maybe Mulder smells and it creates a bad locker room environment.
These are the types of things that
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