The Kentucky Wildcats will run the table until the postseason. The SEC cannot keep up with them. The entire Southeastern Conference just is not in their class.
I discussed UK hoops, as well as a handful of college basketball related topics on The Weekend Sports Report with Packer Dave and Steve Leventhal. You can listen here. I come on around the 24:30 mark.
The Gators are too far below the level of Kentucky. Like we just saw this past weekend. However, when you have a rivalry game, weird things, like an upset, might actually happen when they meet again on the season’s final day.
Kentucky does have some weaknesses, as we’ve chronicled, but who can expose them? Texas showed us the strategy for how to play them: make them beat you with three-pointers and foul shooting. The Horns still fell well short. You need to “make ’em chuck it from the cheap seats” like Dennis Hopper’s character in “Hoosiers” said.
However, no one in college basketball has the height to do that. This Kentucky Wildcats team is taller than every NBA team except the Portland Trail Blazers.
Indeed, what Coach Cal has been able to accomplish on the recruiting trail these past few years has been remarkable. With a few guys coming back to school that nobody actually though would return to Lexington, their total cumulative level of talent is head and shoulders above everyone else.
(Related: the four most popular Kentucky basketball stories of 2014)
Supposedly, teams were licking their chops to play this Kentucky Wildcats basketball team, but now not so much. A reporter asked Tyler Ulis: “are teams still licking their chops?”
“I’m pretty sure they’re looking to get a game with us because we’re the #1 team right now,” Ulis responded.
Ulis is from Ohio originally, but did his prep ball at Marian Catholic in the nearby Chicago suburbs. John Calipari has consistently recruited Chicago very well. Chi City is a very fertile, very rich recruiting ground, and Coach Cal has managed to land the elite prospects from here. (Ulis, Derrick Rose, Anthony Davis)
.
As Cal said, world class teams are defined by two things:
1. they don’t make unforced errors
2. they enjoy the tough times.
Indeed this team embodies both of those ideas.
“World class teams play against themselves, they don’t play against their opponents,” said Calipari.
“We have no schmoes on this team.”
That’s the understatement of the Kentucky Wildcats season right there.
Paul M. Banks owns, operates and writes The Sports Bank.net, which is partnered with Fox Sports Digital, eBay, Google News and CBS Interactive.
You can read Banks’ feature stories in the Chicago Tribune RedEye newspaper and listen to him on KOZN 1620 The Zone.
Follow him on Twitter (@paulmbanks)