Jon Rothstein of CBS Sports talks about Kentucky’s defense and how much better it is than the 2012 national championship team.
1. Kentucky’s D more disruptive than 2012 title team: Just look at the Wildcats’ length. John Calipari starts three players — Trey Lyles, Karl Towns and Willie Cauley-Stein — who stand taller than 6-foot-10. And he brings two more off the bench: Marcus Lee and Dakari Johnson. Kentucky doesn’t have a dominant force on the back line like Anthony Davis (4.7 blocks per game) in 2012, but this collection of length and size makes it nearly impossible to get clean looks at the rim in traffic. It’s not about shots the Wildcats block, it’s about the shots they alter. This team figures to be much improved offensively by March and is still beating opponents by an average of 27.4 points. The 2012 team had two alpha dogs on defense in Davis and Michael Kidd-Gilchrist. But that squad didn’t have the ability to drag opponents into the mud and force them into submission like this group. Consider this: Kentucky limited Louisville — which will compete with Duke and Virginia at the top of the ACC — to 50 points on its home floor last Saturday.
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The length of this team in unreal and unless a team gets unbelievably hot from the three point line, there won’t be a team beat Kentucky, or really even come close.
