There is a lot to like about this Kentucky basketball team now. (Vicky Graff Photo)
Depending upon how one considers the length of the college basketball season, this season now has 2/3 (21/32 games) to 1/2 (21/40 games) in the books. I have seen enough from this UK team to admit that I was wrong about this team’s potential in early December.
After the loss at Notre Dame, I boldly proclaimed that this team would not contend for a championship, would not compete for a trip to the Final Four, would lose double-digit games, and would not even earn one of the four double byes into the SEC Tournament, which this team has proven wrong on all counts, and it is time to admit my error.
To be sure, I am relying upon the same analytical method today to support this mea culpa as I was using in December with the gloom and doom forecast. What has changed is this team, and the magnitude of the change that this team has accomplished is such as I have never seen in the years that I have tracked this data.
Through the first nine games, this team was languishing. Games 7, 8, and 9 comprised three consecutive games in which the team’s performance declined from the previous game. This team was in a free fall, and the trends indicated that this team had not defined its bottom. However, starting with game 10, this team changed, and it has never looked back.
This morning, Ken Pomeroy has UK at #3. My methodology is not quite as kind to this UK team at #7 for the first time this year. The reason for this difference lies in how Pomeroy gives games that occur later in a season slightly more weight than games that occurred early in a season. I do not weight individual games in this manner. Regardless of this analytical difference, I can say that no team has played any better basketball than UK has played for the last 12 games.
Looking forward, I still see this team going to Knoxville as a slight underdog, but this team has an opportunity to run the table over the remainder of this season into the SEC Tournament. I also believe this team will be favored to win the SEC Tournament despite Auburn’s inside track to the SEC regular-season championship.
I believe UK is more likely to get a No. 2 seed into the NCAA Tournament, but if it runs the table and wins the SEC Tournament, I believe a No. 1 seed is within reach, just as a No. 3 seed is still possible should the team stumble down the home stretch.
I won’t burden you with all the numbers, charts, graphs, and tables that support these opinions. Suffice it to say this team has achieved at a remarkably high level over its last 12 games, and after the way it manhandled a strong Kansas team in the Phog last night, it seems clear that this level of play should continue until this season ends.
At present, this team is John Calipari’s second strongest team because it has been playing better over the last 12 games than the 2012 team played at any time during its championship run.
— Guest post by Richard Cheeks
4 Responses
They come along for sure Richard, just gotta stay healthy. Think about this, this team has not been100 percent healthy very often this season and its amazing what they have shown on the court. I think this team has more fight in them than any other team that Cal has coach here and another thing it has brought back the fun to the game to watch something we had been lacking the last few years .Go Cats!!
This was a great win! Allen Fieldhouse is a tough place to get a win, but Joe Hall did it consistently in the 70s. Trying to get a read on this team is like trying to predict the stock market. We put big time whoopings on North Carolina, Tennessee, and now Kansas, yet we get manhandled by Duke, Notre Dame, LSU, and Auburn, not to mention eeking out an overtime home win against a so so Miss. State team. There has been a lot of talk about being healthy, but Ty only scored 2 points, Wheeler only had 7, and Mintz didn’t even score. Grady only had 12. This is the first time for this team to see the bulk of the shots and scoring to come from the bigs. Oscar had his typical stellar game, but what got into Keion? The first thing I noticed was he only took one 3pt. shot and missed it. He actually got 16 shots and Oscar got 13, usually they are lucky if they get a total of 15 shots between them. Topping only took 4 shots and hit all of them as did Ware for his 2 shots. Keion, Oscar, and Jacob can make 15 to 17ft. shots all day long and they finally got the chance to do that in this game. It was the first time this season that the bigs took more shots than the guards. The bigs were 23 for 35 and 12 for 13 from the foul line. The guards/wings were 8 for 26 and would have been total no shows if it were not for Grady’s four 3 pointers and the 17 assists from the group. The littles missed eleven 3 point shots. Here is my point. This team needs to play through the bigs first and then look for a 3 or a floater. If we make just a little better percentage of those 3’s, it would have been a 25 point win. Here is the biggest difference though. This was as physical a game as it gets without someone getting killed. We only had 9 turnovers for the game. In the Miss. St. win, we had 17 and 15 in the LSU loss. If they will keep playing inside/out, this team will go far. If they revert back to outside/in, it will be another also ran year. Calipari usually lets his littles go willy nilly with shots. Did he finally put the brakes on them? Maybe, but now that he has seen what his bigs can do, IF they get the ball, maybe he will run with that formula for a while. Again, this was a great win. Hopefully, it will be their ah ha moment for the rest of the season. Now let’s hear it from all of the Calipari lovers who can’t stand to hear anything but gaga talk about our team.
Your definition of manhandled is way different then most of us saw those games. And who really gives a crap about what happened in the 70’s. There were not near as many great teams in the 70’s as 1 through 65 in the tournament as there are now, we have never seen as many teams that are not ranked beat top ten teams like we are seeing now. So comparing 70’s to now is funny stuff. And it looks to me like you put way to much into how many points a guy gets, rather then seeing that you can have a great game team wise, and not have to score a lot of points. This game surely proved that, as important as TyTy is he only scored a basket.
Funny how some of you can take a great win and find negative crap to talk about. Oh this coach done that in the 70’s, and what we did in losses. Come on see the positive in this team and our coach.
And I loved Joe B Hall, he was a great coach, but we will never know what he would of done in this day and time. And I am a lover of Ky basketball, coach’s and all things Ky. But I’m sure you will find negative in that to.
GO CATS AND GO CAL
See what I mean, LOL!