With the 2011-12 Wildcats making their visit to the White House on Friday, which is probably the last thing the entire team will do together as whole, I wanted to take a look back at this truly special team and season one last time.
Kentucky fans will be treated to great basketball for as long as Calipari is in Lexington (as well as after), but this team is perhaps among the greatest Big Blue Nation (and college basketball in general) will ever see. First, because of the level and mass of talent, but also because of the way they came together as a team.
Truly a band of brothers, the CATS were all superstars in their own right but on this team they were cogs in a wheel. In this case that wheel was an Asanti, on a Pirelli tire, and it was attached to a Bugatti, but these guys were all role players, none-the-less. How many times is the Player of the Year the third or fourth option on offense? What college basketball team has an NBA level talent as the sixth man? Who wins with ‘One and Dones’?
Winning Kentucky’s 8[SUP]th[/SUP] National Championship took a lot of talent, focus on basketball’s dirty work, and a little luck. This is how it happened.
With the commitment of Anthony Davis, Michael Kidd-Gilchrist and Marquis Teague, as well as the return of Terrence Jones and Doron Lamb, Big Blue Nation was drooling and considered the National Title theirs for the taking long before the season had begun. The national pundits weren’t quite so sure (youth, lack of a ‘great coach’ blah, blah, blah…).
At the beginning of the season all eyes were focused on December 3[SUP]rd[/SUP] and a show down at Rupp with an absolutely stacked and number one ranked North Carolina team. A battle for the ages, this game showcased Teague’s potential, Kidd-Gilchrist’s toughness and of course, ‘the block’ by Anthony Davis that saved the game in the final moments. But before that, the CATS were in the Big Apple to take on Kansas in what would be a preview of the National Title game. In the game against Kansas, UK looked a bit jumbled at times, turning the ball over 19 times. But their defensive prowess alone carried them and allowed the offense to get things figured out. This was a theme we would see throughout the season.
What would follow the UNC game was a fateful trip to Bloomington, Indiana to take on the Hoosiers. Long lost in basketball irrelevance, Tom Crean finally had the Indiana program poised and many thought a year away from being ‘back’. Due to a Terrence Jones’ no show, an IU crowd that seemed to be comprised of extras from the movie Roadhouse, and a Christian Watford buzzer beater, the Cats took their first and only loss of the regular season as Indiana arrived back at the table of basketball relevance a year early. For many UK fans old enough to remember, this seemed bitter sweet poetry as Kentucky had squashed IU’s hopes for a perfect season back in ’76.
Prior to the Indiana and UNC games, the Stacey Poole Jr. transfer story had surfaced along with questions of the team’s chemistry and whether or not this basketball juggernaut would be able to really take off. Terrence’s funk only added to these questions. Although he looked to answer the questions with a strong performance in Kentucky’s next game, he was not able to as he suffered one of the most gruesome finger dislocations I have ever seen. Jones missed several games and over this time the team looked to be doing some soul searching. It was about this time, we saw the birth of ‘the Breakfast Club’ and MKG began to emerge as a true leader.
Terrence returned after a few weeks and as for what happened with him in Bloomington, file that away with the Kennedy Assassination and how Cal is such a great recruiter, we will never know. This was just in time for UK’s annual New Year’s Eve showdown with Louisville. True to the history of the rivalry, this was a chippy game. It was also the coming out party for Michael Kidd-Gilchrist as he went for 24 points and 19 boards. The nation was put on notice.
Following a Christmas break that allowed the nation to begin to digest what they were watching in the likes of Anthony Davis (a historic POY performance) and Michael Kidd-Gilchrist as well as the CATS as a whole, Kentucky returned to begin its SEC schedule.
Following blow outs of South Carolina and Auburn, UK went to Knoxville, Tennessee to take on the Volunteers. This was the first college game for a kid named Jarnell Stokes, someone Cal had recruited and who would have likely come to UK had the program not used up all its available scholarships. Stokes came out with a bang, and Kentucky’s physical toughness was tested. MKG dragged his teammates to a nail biter of a victory as Cal and the UK faithful wondered why the other guys wouldn’t step up.
As Kentucky rolled through the SEC with ease, the only question was would they face enough of a challenge to prepare them for the NCAA tourney. The Cats finished the SEC schedule undefeated, beating Florida, Tennessee, Vandy twice in the process. The only other test on their conference schedule came from Vanderbilt in the team’s second. But the Cats overcame Vandy’s veteran team to win their 45[SUP]th[/SUP] SEC regular season title.
Any questions of lacking a test were thrown out the window as Kentucky opened the SEC tournament with surprisingly close games, starting with LSU. The Cats overcame their 19 turnovers to pull out a 9 point win. By now the, national media was talking about how UK needed another loss to prepare them for NCAA tournament.
Well, after beating Florida for the third time, that loss came at the hands of Vanderbilt in SEC tourney title game. Many people criticized Cal as he had made public his opinion that he was not fond of conference tournaments and people felt this contributed to the way the Cats played. But the bottom line is Vandy had a great veteran team and beating any team three times in a row is tough. It was the first conference title for Vandy in 60 years, and the first loss for UK in 24 games.
By now, the national media was conceding that Kentucky was primed to win it all, and that Anthony Davis, who had broken countless UK and NCAA records was about to sweep all the major POY awards.
The Cats opened up the NCAA tourney as the number one seed overall. In a bracket wrought with story lines, UK opened up against the Hill toppers of Western Kentucky. Cats fans were drooling, looking ahead at the chance to play UCONN, to avenge their loss Indiana and to take on Duke on the 20[SUP]th[/SUP] anniversary of the Laetner game. The majority of these story lines were not to be though as UCONN and Duke fell early and the Cats rolled through their bracket beating WKU, Iowa St., Indiana, and Baylor by an average margin of 13 points.
By the time UK looked up from their stomping run, Louisville was waiting for them in New Orleans and the Final Four. In a game that Dick Vitale called the most hyped in the history of the NCAA tournament, also one that nearly shut down the state of Kentucky for a week. Coach Calipari squared off against one time mentor and now nemesis, Rick Pitino. The coaches and the teams set aside all the story lines and played forty minutes of hard basketball though, and as the buzzer sounded, UK had the edge 69-61. Pitino said, “I haven’t always liked all of the Kentucky Teams, but I like this one.”
Now one team stood between the Cats and destiny. The Jayhawks of Kansas. The team that had kept Cal from winning a title with Memphis in ’08. Calipari said that though he never watches the last games of seasons, he watched that Memphis vs. Kansas game to see how the Jayhawks would attack the dribble drive. Cal said that four years later it was just as painful. As the skies opened up to torrential rains in New Orleans, the city was also a flood with college basketball’s bluebloods.
Deep in the Superdome, Cal and the Cats jumped out to a lead and stretched it as far as 16 points before Kansas; this season’s king of comebacks started their second half run. The Jayhawks got the game as close as five points with less than two minutes to go. But Kentucky held on with defense to win the National Championship by a score of 67-59. Anthony Davis, the tournament’s most outstanding player only had one field goal but still managed to dominate the game with 16, rebounds, 6 blocks and 3 steals. Davis also dominated college basketball in historic fashion by sweeping all the major player of the year awards. He is the first Kentucky player ever to win one POY award, let alone all of them.
Kentucky’s season and National Title is said to have had many implications on basketball as a whole. It validated Cal as a coach (supposedly) It proved you can win with freshman. It gave Bobby Knight a beautiful black eye. More importantly than anything, it gave Kentucky fans what they have been holding their breath for 14 years to see. An 8[SUP]th[/SUP] National Championship Banner hanging high in the rafters at Rupp and memories of a team unlike any they may ever see again.
