Everything riding on NCAA tournament for ‘Cats

The Kentucky Wildcats are 34-0. They captured regular season and conference tournament titles. They have completely run the table. Now, they have become only the fourth team to enter the NCAA tournament undefeated since Bob Knights Indiana Hoosiers finished off the last perfect season with a national title in 1976.
The Wildcats are something in between a college basketball team and an NBA team. They have a number of players that will go in the first round of the draft this June and have made the rest of college basketball look completely inferior. Their size and length makes them look like an NBA team on the court.
That, to go along with the effort head coach Jon Calapari has them giving on the defensive end is hard to combat. For someone to beat this Kentucky team, they’d have to play a perfect game.
Is this the greatest team of all time if they cap the season off with a national title? How do they stack up against the other historically great teams? Is this even the best Kentucky team in the last five years?!?
Calapari is one of the greatest recruiters in sports. He has the hora of being “the guy to go play for if you want to get slingshot into the NBA.” Eighteen year old high school players being heavily recruited by top division one basketball programs all have the dream of playing in the NBA, and they know Calapri can get them there. In fact, if someone formed an all-Kentucky NBA squad, they would be a championship team.
Calapari has been able to funnel star after star to the NBA, including the league’s best two-way player. Power forward Anthony Davis of the New Orleans Pelicans has the NBA’s best player efficiency rating, or PER. He was the centerpiece of Calapari’s 2012 national championship team—a team that went 38-2. That team, too, centered around defense and athleticism. It produced five NBA players—four less than the Rick Pitino-coached 1996 Kentucky Wildcats.
Nicknamed ‘The Untouchbles,’ this Wildcat squad went 34-2 and had nine NBA players. Nine. Ironically, the team defeated the Jon Calapari-coached UMass Minutemen in the 1996 final four semifinals. The team went to three straight national championship games from 1996 to1998—easily one of the best college basketball teams ever assembled.
Before UK’s resurgence, the early 90s Duke teams with Bobby Hurley and Christian Laettner were atop college basketball as the premier program. They appeared in four consecutive final fours from 1989 to 1992, winning the last two and also finishing runner up in 1994. Laettner’s senior season in 1992 is probably the best of the bunch. That team defeated the “Fab Five” of Michigan by 20 points for the national championship.
In 1990 and 1991, that same Duke team faced the UNLV Running Rebels in the final four. Coached by the late Jerry Tarkanian, or Tark the Shark, the Rebels were one of the most entertaining teams ever in college hoops. They took on their coaches ‘fuck the man’ mentality and ran the headlines, crushing teams by 20 and 30 points regularly, while also partying in Las Vegas. They won 45 games in a row—the last 11 of the 1990 season, crushing Duke by 30 points in the national championship and the first 34 of the 1991 season. They came very close to becoming the first back-to-back champions since UCLA in the 70s, but instead Laettner and coach Mike Krzyzewski captured that title just a year later in 1992.
The early 80s saw a collection of great teams too. The Georgetown Hoyas and Patrick Ewing; North Carolina with Michael Jordan, James Worthy and Sam Perkins; the Houston Cougars featuring “Phi Slama Jama.” College basketball was truly at its finest. This was before the money was bigger than the game; when the Big East was actually the Big East; when players stuck around for more than one season. And maybe that’s my point.
It’s ridiculous, the attention Kentucky has gotten. Does anyone even remember Wichita State being undefeated going into the big dance last year? Not often does a team have the magnifying glass on them as much as the Wildcats have had going into the tournament, but it’s because college basketball is watered down, drained of talent, and over-coached. Calapari puts his stamp on the game while allowing his next-level players’ talent to flourish.
Sure, this Wildcat team is doing great things. If they match Indiana’s feat of capturing a title while remaining undefeated, it will make college basketball history. That’s always worth recognizing. But are they really on the same level as Big John Thompsons Hoyas? Would you take them head-to-head against the early 90s Running Rebels? What about against the late coach Dean Smith and Michael Jordan with the Tarheels? I wouldn’t.
So yes, the ‘Cats from Lexington are great. But looking back, would they have been able to compete with some of college hoops greatest of all-time? I suppose only time will tell.