Can Anybody Stop the Kentucky Wildcat's Juggernaut in March Madness?

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In the Bluegrass State known for thoroughbred

champions, UK has that championship "pedigree"

Thirty-seven teams have tried to stop the Kentucky Wildcats from making NCAA basketball history and none succeeded.  In fact, since UK won their conference, then won their conference tournament, they have been getting stronger and stronger.

In three rounds of the NCAA tourney as only the strong survive from round to round, the amazing Kentucky Cats have won by a combined 75 points, an unheard of average victory of 25 points per game.

Well, to set the record straight, Kentucky already has the longest unbeaten streak in tournament history.  Indiana was the last unbeaten national champion thirty-nine years ago, in 1976, and they were the team tied for the most wins in history with a 32-0 record.

UCLA had four unbeaten teams during the John Wooden era from 1964-1973 when they won ten national titles, but they were 30-0 each time.  Only two other teams in NCAA history finished unbeaten, North Carolina in 1957 (32-0) and San Francisco in 1956 (29-0) finished unbeaten.

Kentucky has never finished unbeaten, even during the eight years they won they national championship.  However, in their 113 years of NCAA basketball they have the best record of all college teams with 2,214 victories and 672 losses in 2,886 games.

In the jargon of the Bluegrass State known for thoroughbred champions, the UK Wildcats have the "pedigree" to pull off the impossible, finish off winning the national title with a 40-0 record.

Coach John Calipari should have been named NCAA coach of the year, even his chief rival Rick Pitino from Louisville agrees.  However, there is an anti-Kentucky bias because of his "one and done" policy of recruiting and starting freshmen, recognizing they would jump to the NBA at the earliest possible moment.

Ironically, in this his sixth year at UK, so many freshmen returned he incorporate a platoon system to give the top ten players equal playing time, an act requiring the athletes to forgo personal statistics for the good of the team.  In this day and age teaching college basketball stars to be humble, team oriented and unselfish is rare indeed.

A "players-first" coach with a penchant for helping people reach their dreams, John Calipari has guided five teams to the Final Four, led one to a national championship and helped 31 players make it to the NBA during his 22-year college coaching career.

Calipari reached the mountaintop in his third year in Lexington, guiding Kentucky to its eighth national championship and his first national title. He is one of only two coaches to lead three different schools to a Final Four (UMass-1996; Memphis-2008; Kentucky-2011, 2012, 2014).

The Wildcats rode the trademark hard-nosed Calipari defense to the 2012 title, finishing the season as the nation's top-ranked team in field-goal percentage defense and blocked shots.

Following a 3.4 grade-point average in the 2013 spring semester -- the highest in Coach Cal's tenure at UK -- the Wildcats' scholarship players posted a 3.11 GPA for the second consecutive semester in the 2014 fall semester. It marked the seventh time in the last eight semesters Coach Cal's team earned a 3.0 or better.

As someone who prides himself on helping young men reach their dreams, he has placed 31 players in the NBA during his college coaching career, including 19 over his first five seasons at Kentucky. The 19 picks over that five-season span is the most of any coach.

So here we are, UK may be playing for the national title for the third time in three years, if only they can win three more games.  I say history awaits the Kentucky Wildcats and that no one will stop the Kentucky juggernaut.

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Pythagoras & Aristotle Report on March Madness - How peculiar those Americans - The Sweet Sixteen

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Enough from the sports analysts, arm chair point guards, loud mouth fanatics, news and entertainment personalities, geeks and computers, after two or three rounds, the first of many odd math facts attached to March Madness, we have sixteen teams left.

The bracket says three rounds were played but reality says we went from 64 to 32 teams (1st round), then 32 to 16 teams (2nd round).  My math says two rounds.  We have left 16 to 8 (3rd round), 8 to 4 (4th round), 4 to 2 (5th round), and the championship (6th round).  Since when did a play in by a couple of teams constitute a tournament round?

Clearly, no one involved in the billion dollar March Madness money machine worries about details like accuracy, math, or specifics, just the bottom line.  Well the bottom line started out with Kentucky the favorite and after two or three rounds, nothing has changed.

The first rounds destroyed the East coast, or specifically the Northeast, as a perennial powerhouse of teams which seems a logical shift, but that is part of the analysis to come.

For insights free of the often-hysterical outbursts by all our specialists, I have channeled Pythagoras, ancient Greek mathematician, and Aristotle, ancient Greek philosopher, to get their analysis of what is going on.

First, they offered as background a review of the definition of "Madness", as used in the made-for-TV phrase March Madness.  Does the term "Madness" contribute to the branding of the NCAA championship?

Here is their composite definition:

mad·ness

noun

Madness

The definition of madness:

1. insanity, mental illness, dementia, derangement, lunacy, instability

2. folly, foolishness, idiocy, stupidity, insanity, lunacy, silliness 

3. frenzied or chaotic activity

The synonyms for various states of madness:

1. mania, psychosis,

2. craziness

3. bedlam, mayhem, chaos, pandemonium, craziness, uproar, turmoil, disorder, all hell broken loose, (three-ring) circus

According to my learned ancients, it would appear the term indeed describes the state of chaos resulting from March Madness.

Pythagoras was most interested in the mathematical puzzles, assumptions, thesis and hypothesis involved in seeding, results, conferences, and all the other trivia associated with the payoffs.  Some of his observations included conference power rating, note the numbers represent the conference standings of the tournament teams, not the NCAA seedings.

So far through the first two or three rounds here are conference results.

Atlantic Coast Conference

Conference champion (1) Virginia lost

(2) Duke, (3) Notre Dame, (4) Louisville, (5) North Carolina, (7) North Carolina State won

Pac 12

One team lost

(1) Arizona, (2) Utah, and (4) UCLA won

Big East

Top five teams lost

Only (6) Xavier remains

Big Ten

Five teams lost

(1) Wisconsin and (3) Michigan State remain

Big 12

Five teams lost

(3) Oklahoma and (4) West Virginia remain

SEC

Four teams lost

(1) Kentucky remains

Missouri Valley

One team lost

(1) Wichita State won

West Coast

One team lost

(1) Gonzaga remains

Pythagoras is also curious about the relationship between tournament seedings, and actual results to date, so here are the stats.

Seeds Surviving

 1.        three teams  Kentucky, Wisconsin, Duke

 2.        two teams     Arizona, Gonzaga

 3.        two teams     Notre Dame, Oklahoma

 4.        two teams     North Carolina, Louisville

 5.        two teams     West Virginia, Utah

 6.        one team       Xavier

 7.        two teams     Wichita State, Michigan State

 8.        one team       North Carolina State

11.        one team       UCLA

Other Pythagorean factoids to bear in mind:

No team whose name began with a "V" survived the opening rounds, four teams lost.

Three teams whose name began with a "N" and three whose name began with a "W" made the Sweet Sixteen, along with two whose name began with "U".

North Carolina was the state with the most teams, three, while Kentucky and California had two teams each.

Roughly speaking, the geographic distribution of teams is:

Northeast - 1

Southeast - 3

Midwest - 8

West - 4

Of those from the Midwest, six were east of the Mississippi River, and two were west of the Mississippi River.

As far as mascots, which interested Aristotle, here are the teams, seeding and mascots.  As you can see, there are two Wildcats, Kentucky and Arizona, and little else in common among the schools.  Aristotle seemed most interested in the Spartans of Michigan State.

1 Kentucky Wildcats       

1 Duke Blue Devils      

1 Wisconsin Badgers    

2 Arizona Wildcats       

2 Gonzaga Bulldogs ('Zags)        

3 Notre Dame Fighting Irish   

3 Oklahoma Sooners     

4 Louisville Cardinals      

4 North Carolina Tar Heels      

5 Utah Utes        

5 West Virginia Mountaineers    

6 Xavier Muskeeters          

7  Michigan State Spartans     

7 Wichita State Shockers  

8 NC State Wolfpack       

11 UCLA Bruins

 

   

Of course one stat that is not in the formula is the fan intensity and the cheerleader impact and we can thank the lowest seeded team for bringing along the highest rated cheerleaders to the tourney, eleven seeded UCLA.

So what do my friends Pythagoras & Aristotle think of this unique American past time? 

Stay tuned.

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