Mike DeCourcy of The Sporting News has Kentucky ranked No.1 in his preseason poll and Doug Gottlieb has the Wildcats ranked No. 7. DeCourcy weighs in on Gottlieb’s decision to rank Kentucky so low.
2) CBS Sports’ Doug Gottlieb ranked Kentucky No. 7, while all of his other cohorts picked the Wildcats No. 1. Is he smart, and the rest of America stupid?
DeCourcy: Oh, Doug is definitely smart. I love listening to his commentary on games and hate reading the columns he writes for CBSSports.com, because someone who just writes a piece here and there shouldn’t be able to do it as well as he does. It’s like somebody sitting down at a piano without lessons and suddenly pounding out coherent Tchaikovsky.
Whatever Big Blue fans will say about Doug’s ranking, and a lot of it isn’t technically printable unless we’re writing for Deadspin, there is no correct answer at this point. If he’d stood apart from the crowd last year and said predicting UK to become a top-five team was not only wrong, it was insanity, he’d have been right. He says he did say that, so that was an excellent call.
Gottlieb believes North Carolina and Oklahoma State will have better seasons than UK and Kansas, the two most talented teams in college basketball. He projected the Jayhawks to finish 10th. He very well could turn out to be right. Obviously, our publication does not agree. If anything, after watching KU in practice twice last week, I’d move the Jayhawks up from No. 6, possibly even as high as No. 2. I don’t get to play that mulligan, though.
Where I don’t agree with Gottlieb is in the defense he presented of these projections, pointing to last year’s results—UK’s failure to make the NCAAs, its NIT loss to Robert Morris.
This is the 2014 season, not 1994. Past performance is not an indicator of future results.
When John Calipari took over UK in 2009-10, the Wildcats were coming off an NIT appearance and loss to Notre Dame. With John Wall and DeMarcus Cousins making All-America, the Wildcats won 35 games in his first season and reached the Elite Eight. Adding great talent can turn around a team instantly, and the NBA Draft and recruiting analysts all insist UK added great talent.
Gottlieb also expressed concern about the Harrison twins and whether they would blend comfortably into the chemistry of a championship team. They’ll have to prove they can, just as Amile Jefferson and Marshall Plumlee will have to demonstrate they can hold down the center spot for Gottlieb’s No. 3 team (Duke), just as Chris Jones will have to adjust to Division I playmaking and lack of height will have to be overcome by his No. 2 team (Louisville), and Keith Appling will have to distribute the basketball after two seasons in which he did not for Gottlieb’s No. 1 (Michigan State).
Read Starting 5: Three heavyweights need recruiting pick-me-up by clicking here.
