How was he supposed to get back to the playoffs with a bunch of freshman? No one really gave him much of a chance. At mid-season it appeared that the nay-sayers had been correct. The Kentucky Wildcat basketball team for 2014 was just not up to the standards set in previous years. Fanatical fans were frustrated. Sports writers went on the attack.
But then, as if on cue, the Wildcats started winning games and showing a cohesive teamwork that is always indicative of Coach John Calipari’s teams. They always seem to peek at just the right time to participate, once again, in the Madness of March that is NCAA basketball’s primer attraction.
On the first day of March this year, the Kentucky Wildcats could not even manage to beat a 14-20 South Carolina team and yet here they are getting ready to go down to Arlington to participate once again in the Final Four, which has been the number one goal of every basketball team in America since the season began.
Coach Cal took over the basketball program at the University of Kentucky in 2009 and has since put together one of the most stellar records in NCAA basketball. One of the coach’s major attributes has to be his ability to recruit top level players out of high school and turn them into players capable on entering professional basketball and commanding a multimillion dollar salary.
No college coach in the country has put more top flight players into the NBA than John Calapari. He started with Demarcus Cousins, Eric Bledsoe, Daniel Orton and the great John Wall for the 2010 team. In 2011 he scored Brandon Knight plus Terrence Jones and Doron Lamb and the team finished 22-8 and won the SEC Championship. They eventually made it to the Final Four that year only to fall to UConn by one point.
In 2012 Coach Cal did it again by recruiting such talent as Anthony Davis and Marquis Teague. This well rounded Wildcat team did go on to win the NCAA Championship that year, the first for Kentucky since 1998.
All of those great teams started out with great players with some heavy upperclassman experience under their belts. This year’s team was made up of a bunch of unknown freshmen with practically no playoff experience at all. They lost 10 games to teams they should have beaten but made it to the Final Four anyway.
