Note: This is a post that I began to write after the brackets for the 2014 NCAA Tournament came out in March and Kentucky was placed as a 8 seed in the extraordinarily difficult Midwest Regional with Wichita St., Louisville, Duke, and Michigan. Thankfully, I did not post it and forgot about the article (kinda like how everybody in the world has forgotten about Jimmer and his shooting ability, which I am still holding onto), but it is pretty funny to look back at and see how ridiculously wrong I was about Kentucky (never become skeptical of Big Blue Nation, Kevin Love's capacity to miss out on the playoffs, Chris Bosh's three point shooting capabilities, the power of Game of Thrones to shock you, or Jack Bauer's ability to escape certain death every episode). I was making fun of the Wildcats for having such a bad season after such high expectations (they had the worst regular season for a team ranked pre-season number 1 since either the UConn team in 1999-2000 with Khalid El-Amin that finished 25-10 and lost in the second round to Tennessee or the 1979-1980 Indiana team with Isiah Thomas, Butch Carter, and Mike Woodson that is the only club other then this Kentucky squad to fall out of the top 25 after being the pre-season number 1) and then they of course made a run to their second NCAA Championship Game in the last three years and their third Final Four under John Calipari since 2009-2010. Kentucky also became just the fifth 8 seed to reach the Final Four along with North Carolina and Wisconsin in 2000 (lost in the National Semifinals to Jason Richardson, Mateen Cleaves, and Michigan St. and Mike Miller, Udonis Haslem, and Florida respectively), Butler in 2011 (lost to Kemba Walker and UConn in a very poorly played title game), and Villanova in 1985 (beat Georgetown and Patrick Ewing in the famous championship upset by Rollie Massimino). The Wildcats are also now only behind North Carolina and UCLA in terms of Final Fours by school (Tar Heels have 18, Bruins have 17, UK has 16) and are tied with the Bruins for the most National Championship game appearances in college basketball history (both teams have 12). To summarize, I couldn't have been more wrong (this is a statement that Billy King, Ernie Grunfeld, and Reggie McKenzie must have felt like saying over and over).
It seems like yesterday that the college basketball season was just about to begin and some people actually thought that Kentucky could become the first team since the 1975-1976 Indiana Hoosiers team of Scott May, Kent Benson, and Tom Abernethy to go undefeated. Across the Bluegrass state, fans everywhere outside of Louisville and the KFC Yum Center were buying 40-0 t-shirts in honor of the Wildcats (people also thought that the Falcons could finally break through and win their first Super Bowl in franchise history after three straight seasons with more than 10 wins and yet they finished 4-12 in 2013, their fewest wins since 1996, so don't ever listen to pre-season predictions). Obviously, the Wildcats had a really strong recruiting class coming into the season with the likes of Julius Randle (a mix of Zach Randolph and Chris Webber), James Young, Darkari Johnson, the Harrison twins, and Marcus Lee. In the history of college basketball, there have been a lot of really great recruiting classes that have changed the course of the game for the next couple of seasons. In 1965, UCLA brought in Lew Alcindor, Lucius Allen, Ken Heitz, and Lynn Shackelford (a class so good that they beat the varsity team that went 18-8 by 15 in a scrimmage at Pauley Pavilion when freshmen were not allowed to play in their first year in college) and in 1979, Isiah Thomas, Jim Thomas, and Randy Whittman all came to Indiana to play for Bob Knight. Cincinnati's recruiting class when they brought in Oscar Robertson in 1956 or LSU's class when they got Pete Maravich in 1967 are right up there with the best of all-time because those two guards were just that good on their own. Other great classes in the modern era include Michigan's Fab Five of Chris Webber, Jalen Rose, Juwan Howard, Jimmy King, and Ray Jackson from 1991, the 1999 Duke class of Carlos Boozer, Jay Williams, and Mike Dunleavy, Jr., the 2002 North Carolina class of Sean May, Raymond Felton, Rashad McCants, and David Noel, Florida's group of Corey Brewer, Al Horford, Taurean Green, and Joakim Noah from 2004, Ohio State's class of 2006 of Greg Oden, Mike Conley, David Lighty, and Daequan Cook, and finally Calipari's own class of Anthony Davis, Michael-Kidd Gilchrist, Marquis Teague, and Kyle Wiltjer from 2011. No matter how good Kentucky's 2013 recruiting class was made out to be by the high school recruiting experts or the pressure that would be taken off their backs by the return of the super athletic Alex Poythress and the shot-blocking Willie Cauley-Stein, to put them in that conversation without even stepping foot on the floor in Lexington was more absurd than The Plague by Albert Camus. In fact, Kentucky's pursuit of perfection lasted as long as Billy Donovan's coaching career with the Magic, or more aptly, Kim Kardashian and Kris Humphries's marriage.
(You can't even feel bad for Kris Humphries. Why didn't he look at Reggie Bush? From 2007 to 2010 when the USC Heisman Trophy winner - excuse me, the 5-year Heisman Trophy winner before he gave it back - was with Kim Kardashian, Bush never even reached 600 rushing yards in a season with the Saints despite being just the second running back along with Ronnie Brown to go in the first two picks of the NFL draft since 1996. Without the Kardashian syndrome in the last three years, Bush has finished each season with more than 975 rushing yards, one of only six running backs to do so along with Adrian Peterson, Matt Forte, Marshawn Lynch, Frank Gore, and Chris Johnson. I'm calling this the Kardashian effect, which is the adverse repercussions that an athlete can face from dating a high profile celebrity, a list that includes Tony Romo, Amar'e Stoudemire, Lleyton Hewitt, Andre Agassi, and Diego Forlan. Bush's improvement likely has more to do with the fact that he left the Saints and their group of running backs that is as big as the Spanish Armada and has gotten more than 215 carries every year since then with the Dolphins and Lions, but I refuse to believe that Kim doesn't factor into this equation. However, you can feel bad for Kris Humphries for getting completely Mozgoved by Blake Griffin earlier this season in January, which is a list that now pretty much includes Humphries, Mozgov, Gasol, Perkins, Ibaka, and is expending as fast as the NFL playoffs. The best part about watching Blake's dunk over Humphries over and over is looking at DeAndre Jordan's reaction to the dunk because he looks like he just saw Lincoln get shot by John Wilkes Booth).
Anyway, not only did Kentucky lose in their third game of the season to Michigan St. in the Champions Classic, and end their very short flirt with perfection that so many fans predicted, but they then lost 9 more times after that game in Chicago in the regular season. Their defeats included two losses to Arkansas (the first time Calipari has lost to one team twice in a season at Kentucky before the Wildcats fell three times to Florida later on in the season), once to a team in South Carolina that may have finished six games under .500 because their coach is so scary that they are probably afraid to do anything on the floor, and finally to a LSU team that the Wildcats had not lost to since they had Billy Gillispie as their head coach in 2008-2009 (any Kentucky stat that comes with the line since Billy Gillispie is just destined to not end well unless you consider their most losses in one season since 1989-1990 a step in the right direction). To make matters worse, the Wildcats were 1-6 against ranked opponents with losses to Michigan St., Baylor, North Carolina, and Florida three teams, had only one victory over a team inside the RPI top 40, which came against Louisville at Rupp Arena in December, and were a dismal 5-6 in true road games with their first loss in Columbia, South Carolina since the 2009-2010 season. Even after the Wildcats knocked off Pitino's Cardinals for the 5th time in their last 6 meetings, which is sometimes viewed as more important than the season itself (just ask Bill Curry about the importance of rivalries to a head coach, as the former Alabama coach had to leave Tuscaloosa to coach at Kentucky because despite having a 26-10 record with the Crimson Tide in three seasons and leading them to their first SEC title since Bear Bryant was the coach of the team in 1981, Curry was 0-3 against Auburn in the Iron Bowl, the worst streak against the Tigers since they lost 5 games in a row all the way back from 1954 to 1958), there was a vibe of dissatisfaction and almost sulking coming out of the Kentucky team.
You can look at so many different reasons why this Kentucky squad became just the 15th Wildcats team in the last 83 years dating back to when Adolph Rupp took over the program in 1930 to lose at least 10 regular season games in a season (just for fun, in comparison, Northwestern has had 73 regular seasons with at least 10 losses since 1930 including every year since 1958-1959. I'm not sure what is worse for the Collins family: Doug losing the Gold Medal to the USSR in that very controversial 1972 Olympic Game in Munich or Chris having to coach Northwestern). Obviously, this season was the year of the freshmen with everybody falling in love with the standout first year players from across the nation including Andrew Wiggins, Joel Embiid, and Wayne Selden from Kansas, Jabari Parker of Duke, Aaron Gordon and Rondae-Hollis Jefferson from Arizona, Tyler Ennis at Syracuse, and Noah Vonleh from Indiana, which may have factored into people overrating just how good Kentucky's freshmen really were from the start of the season (other freshmen classes that can compete with this year include the 1979 class of Isiah Thomas, James Worthy, Ralph Sampson, Dominique Wilkins, Byron Scott, and Quintin Dailey, the 1981 class of Michael Jordan, Charles Barkley, Patrick Ewing, Chris Mullin, Ed Pinckney, and Sam Vincent and the 2007 class of Kevin Love, Derrick Rose, Blake Griffin, James Harden, Eric Gordon, DeAndre Jordan, and Michael Beasley).
Aside from Julius Randle, whose college basketball leading 24 double-doubles as a freshmen has only been surpassed by a first year player once since 1980 when Michael Beasley had a NCAA record 28 double-doubles for Kansas St. and Bob Huggins in 2007-2008, Kentucky's freshmen class was nowhere near what most people expected from it. For as much hype as the Harrisons got for being the best twin combination since the Sedins, the Barbers, or the Bryans, Andrew and Aaron played much more like the Morris or Collins twins than the Arsdale brothers with Kentucky this season. Andrew does more of the ball handling for the Wildcats at point while Aaron plays more so on the wing, but the Wildcats back-court pairing was often exploited by top guards like Keith Appling and Gary Harris from Michigan St. (scored a combined 42 points against the Wildcats), Marcus Paige from North Carolina (scored 23 points versus the Harrisons), and Scottie Wilbekin and Michael Frazier II from Florida (held the Harrisons to 18 combined points in their game in Gainesville). Andrew had the lowest assist-to-turnover ration among any player in a major college basketball conference and averaged nearly 3 turnovers per contest, and Aaron was not very assertive and refused to attack the rim in becoming purely an outside shooter, as in the 11 games where he scored 10 points or less, he shot a terrible 8-44 (18.1%) from three. Although the Harrisons both possess tremendous size for perimeters players and their 6-6 frame allows them to be disruptive defensively when they set their minds to it, they were often times not explosive enough to get by players and make plays offensively. Meanwhile, James Young is a good three point shooter for the Wildcats, but only Marshall Henderson from Ole Miss, Sean Kilpatrick from Cincinnati, Michael Frazier from Florida, Brady Heslip from Baylor, Ben Brust from Wisconsin, and Trevor Cooney from Syracuse took more threes than Young this season from teams in major conferences, which is somewhat concerning because Young morphed into solely a jump shooter, much like Aaron. Although Young does have a quick release to get his smooth looking jump shot off before defenders can close down on him, he can't really create his own shot, which hurts the Wildcats because Andrew often struggles to put his teammates into good positions to make plays. Marcus Lee dunks everything he can get his hands on off the backboard, but he has not seen a lot of action this season and Darkari Johnson is a big 7-footer that does have a basis for a good post game, but he is still developing and is only 18 years old.
It also seemed as if the Kentucky players thought that they would just roll through teams during the season and that when that didn't happen, they lost confidence because the Wildcats did not have the same fight that Calipari's 2011-2012 team so often showed and that was more reminiscent of the disaster that happened in Lexington last season with the unreliable Archie Goodwin leading the way. The thing that made the Anthony Davis team just so good, aside from the fact that they had Davis and everybody else didn't (there were some real good teams that year if you remember with Scoop Jardine, MCW, Dion Waiters, C.J. Fair, and Kris Joseph on Cuse, Kendall Marshall, John Henson, Reggie Bullock, Harrison Barnes, James McAdoo, and Tyler Zeller down in North Carolina, Aaron Craft, Deshaun Thomas, Jared Sullinger on Ohio St., and the Kansas team of Thomas Robinson, Tyshawn Taylor, and Jeff Withey), was that everybody in that UK group worked so hard defensively for one another. Whether it was defensive rotations, MKG switching onto a big man and having to guard him in the post, or Darius Miller taking on the opposing teams best player every night, that Kentucky team did whatever it had to do. However, this year's Wildcats squad has some real defensive deficiencies, as James Young is not particularly quick on the perimeter or strong enough to guard players inside at the four position and for as good as Julius Randle is offensively and in his mid-range game, he does not have real good ball awareness and he is not the best interior defender. The Wildcats rely to much on Willie-Cauley Stein and their length to block and change shots around the lane, which can work on occasion because Kentucky is just flat out more athletic than every team they play (the Wildcats are 10th in the nation in blocks per game with almost 6 each contest), but constantly letting guys into the paint is not a recipe for success no matter what. LSU is the only team in the SEC that allows more points from 2-pointers than Kentucky and despite their unmatched athleticism and size, Kentucky is 300th in the nation in forcing their opponents to turn over the ball, ahead of only Tennessee and Missouri in the SEC.
It has been an incredible college basketball season, one of the best in recent memory (I feel like I say this every year, but I actually mean it this time. Nonetheless, I guarantee you I will say the same thing next season when Coach K has his best Duke team since the days of Jay Williams and Carlos Boozer with his recruiting class of Jahlil Okafor, Tyus Jones, Justise Winslow, and Grayson Allen, Kansas brings in Cliff Alexander and Kelly Oubre to go with Wayne Selden and Perry Ellis, Kentucky reloads with whatever freshmen come back along with recruits Trey Lyles, Karl Towns, Devin Booker, and Tyler Ulis, SMU brings in a player that is better than anybody Larry Brown coached with the Bobcats from 2008-2010 with 6-5 point guard Emmanuel Mudiay, and Arizona and Wisconsin return loaded cores). We were able to see the individual greatness of players across the nation, including Doug McDermott, who now ranks behind only Pete Maravich of LSU, Freeman Williams from Portland St., La Salle's Lionel Simmons, and Alphonso Ford of Mississippi Valley State in career points in division I history, and also the outstanding play of freshmen like Jabari Parker, Andrew Wiggins, Joel Embiid, and Tyler Ennis. We were also fortunate enough to watch a team like Virginia win the ACC regular season and post-season titles and have their best year since the days of Ralph Sampson and Wichita St. become the first team since the 1990-1991 UNLV squad of Larry Johnson, Stacey Augmon, Greg Anthony, and Elmore Spencer to enter the NCAA tournament with an undefeated record. It was a great year for college basketball fans across the nation, except for in Lexington, where pre-season expectations of a 40-0 season have changed to people not being surprised if the Wildcats lose to Kansas St. in their first game of the tourney, and Calipari falling for the first time in the big dance since his Brandon Knight, Terrence Jones, and Doron Lamb squad lost in the Final Four to Kemba Walker and UConn back in 2011.
Note: After spending around 2,500 words bashing Kentucky for their disappointment of a season in going 24-10, they of course proved me wrong and taught me to never count out a team that has a starting line-up where every player is at least 6-6 and a McDonald's All-American. I should have known better then to think that Kansas St. could actually beat UK because the Wildcats have only won more than one game in the tournament once since 1989 when they made the Elite Eight with Jacob Pullen in 2010 (even the Mets, Jets, White Sox, and Michigan St. think that Kansas St. is a pretty obvious little brother to Kansas). I'm still not sure how Kentucky beat Wichita St. in their second game of the tourney in the 1-8 match-up, a game that was undoubtedly one of the best played NCAA tournament contests over the past few decades (Kentucky's win marked the fourth year out of the last five that a one seed has lost before the Sweet 16 with the others being when Northern Iowa knocked off Kansas in 2010, when Butler beat Pittsburgh in 2011, and when Gonzaga fell to Wichita St. in 2013). UK somehow knocked off the undefeated Shockers despite the fact that Wichita St. shot 55.1 percent from the floor, the 4th highest for any opponent against Calipari since he came to Lexington in 2009-2010, made 10 of 21 three pointers, averaged a ridiculously high 1.215 points per possession, the 2nd highest rate against Kentucky's defense all season long, and had Cleanthony Early score a season high 31 points on 12 of 17 shooting. Kentucky then turned to Aaron Harrison, who somehow morphed into Bryce Drew/Christian Laettner/Kenton Paulino/Drew Nicholas overnight and not once, not twice, but three times saved Kentucky with late three point clutch jump shots, all of which came from nearly the identical spot on the left side of the floor. Against Louisville in the Midwest Regional semifinals, down by one point with under a minute left, Russ Smith left Harrison open in the corner and he took a pass from Randle and knocked down the three to give UK the victory. In the elite eight against Michigan, with the game tied at 72, Aaron took a hand-off from his brother and hit a three over Caris LeVert with 2 seconds left to send the Wildcats to the Final Four. Finally, in the National Semifinals versus Wisconsin and with Kentucky down by two with 5 seconds left, Aaron hit literally the exact same three pointer to give the Wildcats the lead and the eventual win (if you want to see deja vu, don't watch the movie with Denzel Washington, but watch the final minute of Kentucky's games against Louisville, Michigan, and Wisconsin). The Wildcats run did come to an end when they were not able to get enough offense in the title game against a deserved National Champion in Shabazz Napier, Ryan Boatright, DeAndre Daniels and UConn, but they proved to never count a team out until they have been knocked out. With that knowledge in mind, I think the Pacers growing dysfunction will be the reason why they will lose in the winner-take-all game 7 against the undermatched Atlanta Hawks in the Eastern Conference first round, but there is a pretty good chance that I will be writing a piece in June with the title, "Looking Back - The Things I Regret Saying About The Indiana Pacers Before The Eastern Conference Semifinals Even Began."
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