Kentucky head coach John CalipariJames Crisp/Associated Press
No coach is ever going to catch John Wooden on the list of career national championships in Division I men’s college basketball, but Kentucky is gearing up to move one step closer to UCLA (11) by winning its ninth title next month.
Somewhat lost in the shuffle of Zion Williamson’s exploding shoe, Gonzaga’s impeccable streak of consecutive blowout wins, Kansas’ Big 12 streak possibly coming to an end and the constant discussion of whether bubble teams even want to play in the NCAA tournament this year is that Kentucky has evolved into a behemoth.
PJ Washington isn’t going to win national player of the year, but he at least belongs in that conversation and has arguably bypassed Grant Williams as the favorite for SEC POY. Tyler Herro has been lights out in SEC play. Keldon Johnson is making an incredible all-around impact. Ashton Hagans has been invaluable since becoming the starting point guard. Nick Richards and EJ Montgomery combine to make a great shot-blocking rebounder.
It’s all coming together the way most analysts pictured it before the season began.
It started with the late-December wins over North Carolina and Louisville and culminated* in beatdowns of Tennessee and Auburn in the past two weeks. Kentucky has racked up nine Quadrant 1 wins and another four Quadrant 2 wins just in the past 10 weeks, which is better than what 99 percent of teams can boast about their entire seasons.
*Kindly disregard the close call against Arkansas on Tuesday night. Isaiah Joe was on fire in the first half, and that was a prime spot for a letdown game for Kentucky, three days after destroying Auburn and four days before the rematch with Tennessee. The Wildcats actually showed toughness in battling back to get that win, even though it’s a game they should’ve won easily.
That 34-point loss to Duke to open the season feels like it happened a decade ago—both because Kentucky is much better now and because Duke (12-of-26 from three-point range in that game) has only shot better than 40 percent from distance three times since mid-November. Williamson or not, if they meet again in the tournament, it should be one hell of a game.
PJ Washington (25) and Ashton Hagans (2)Mark Humphrey/Associated Press
Before we get too far ahead of ourselves by dreaming about a rematch in the Final Four, let’s take a look behind, because one of the incredible things about Kentucky is that while the roster changes at an alarming rate from year to year, the story rarely does.
This is now the fourth consecutive season that the Wildcats have done all of the following:
- Opened the year ranked in the Top Five of the AP poll thanks to yet another phenomenal recruiting class.
- Suffered exactly two losses in their first 12 games, leading to questions about whether one of the most talented-yet-inexperienced rosters in the nation can be trusted.
- Lost at least one January road game to a conference foe going nowhere fast and subsequently spent at least one week ranked 15th or worse in the AP poll, dropping almost entirely out of the Final Four conversation.
- Made a nice late-January impression in the SEC-B12 Challenge—usually against Kansas—even if they didn’t necessarily win the game.
- Got back into everyone’s good graces by obliterating a bunch of decent-to-good SEC teams in February.
If they continue down this familiar road, they’ll once again win the SEC tournament in two weeks and will enter the NCAA tournament as one of the trendy picks to win it all.
For Big Blue Nation’s sake, here’s hoping that’s where the similarities end because none of the previous three seasons ended with Final Four appearances, let alone national championships.
One major difference from the past three years, though, is that this year’s team is in great shape to get a No. 1 seed. And that almost always bodes well for this program.
Tyler HerroJames Crisp/Associated Press
Kentucky has earned a spot on the top line 11 times in the past 35 years. In all but one of those tournaments—the infamous second-round loss to UAB in 2004—the Wildcats made it at least as far as the Elite Eight. More than half of the time (six of 11), they reached the Final Four. Twice they won the national championship.
Most bracketologists (including yours truly) seem to have Kentucky rated fourth overall on the seed list at the moment. However, a road win over Tennessee on Saturday would almost cement the Wildcats onto the 1-line and would probably even move them ahead of Duke. If they lose at Tennessee but win the SEC tournament, they’d still most likely be a No. 1 seed.
Win all remaining games, and the No. 1 overall seed is a strong possibility.
But just finishing ahead of the second-best ACC team would be huge because Duke and Virginia are currently projected as the No. 1 seeds in the East (Washington, D.C.) and South (Louisville) Regions. The ACC tournament winner (provided it’s Duke, Virginia or North Carolina) will get the top spot in the East, but Kentucky could still easily jump up to No. 2 overall to lock down the South Region and one of the most geographically favorable paths to the Final Four ever.
Not only have the Wildcats been hotter than the sun for the past two months, but they would get quite the home-crowd advantage by going through Columbus (less than 200 miles from Lexington) in the first two rounds followed by Louisville (about 75 miles from campus) in the subsequent two rounds.
And here’s some bonus good news if that happens: Louisville isn’t allowed to play in the South Region because it is the host for those two middle rounds, so the selection committee wouldn’t even be able to put those rivals in the same region.
As long as Duke doesn’t completely collapse down the stretch and remains a No. 1 seed, a spot on the top line would also guarantee that Kentucky would get to avoid the Blue Devils at least until the Final Four.
Before the first game between Kentucky and Tennessee, I wrote about how a Tennessee win might signal the passing of the SEC’s torch from John Calipari to Rick Barnes. Suffice it to say, that didn’t happen. But the upcoming battle also has major ramifications because—with Williamson’s status at Duke still unknown—a second win over the Volunteers may set up Kentucky as the most likely team to win the national championship.
At the very least, the Wildcats are among the top candidates to cut down the nets in Minneapolis. They took a bit of a winding road to get here, but they are every bit the threat that everyone was expecting before the season began.
NET rankings and Quadrant data courtesy of WarrenNolan.com. NET rankings accurate through start of play Wednesday.
Kerry Miller covers men’s college basketball and college football for Bleacher Report. You can follow him on Twitter: @kerrancejames.
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