Sportingnews.com recently interviewed CBS analyst Clark Kellogg about the Final Four, John Calipari’s one and done method at Kentucky and his prediction for this years National Champion.
Here is an excerpt from the interview.
Sporting News: What are your thoughts on this Final Four field?
Clark Kellogg: I think we got a great group. You got the No. 1 overall seed in Florida, a team that’s won 30 straight games and has a future Hall of Fame coach in Billy Donovan. Bo Ryan, first Final Four for him, a Wisconsin team that’s the highest-scoring team in the last 20 years in that program’s history. UConn’s a little bit off the beaten path, perhaps the one team of the four here that is most surprising, and yet has the most dynamic and dominant player to this point in the tournament, I think, in Shabazz Napier, and a second-year coach in Kevin Ollie, tremendous story there.
And then you’ve got Kentucky. Kentucky is Kentucky, always a preeminent program in college basketball and now perhaps on the cusp of adding another national championship with a group of primarily freshmen making it happen, a group that showed tremendous inconsistency during the regular season and during the last three weeks came together in tremendous fashion … all the things you would attribute to a championship team have been on display for this freshman-laden Kentucky group and now they are a championship-caliber team, I don’t think there’s any question about it. So I think we’ve got tremendous stories and the potential for three really outstanding games here in North Texas this weekend.
SN: Speaking of UK, there’s been plenty of discussion about John Calipari’s unapologetic use of “one-and-done” players as his strategy for success. Where do you fall in that debate?
CK: Well, each institution and each coach has the autonomy to build the program the way they deem best for their institution. Across the board, I would much rather see kids be able to leave high school, go right to the pros, or if they go to college be committed for two or three years. That would be the ideal mechanism I’d like to see in place. That said, that’s not the reality right now, and I have no issues with the way John Calipari and Kentucky have gone about building their teams. I don’t have a real problem with it.
Young, talented players want to play on the biggest stages with a chance to go to the highest level, and those who are good enough will do it early. John has elected to try to get the very best players that he can, help them realize their dream of being pros while perhaps winning a championship. Not ideal, but I don’t disparage it, because a lot of what this team has shown and his teams since he’s been there have shown are the things we desire to see in championship teams. Great chemistry, unselfishness, playing hard and playing for each other. I thought his 2012 team was one of the very best I’ve seen in that regard, and it’s not easy to do when you’ve got tremendously talented and overhyped freshmen and sophomores … you look across college basketball, it’s a very, very minute percentage (of one-and-dones). But it usually is amongst the higher-profile programs, so it gets attention that’s disproportionate to the actual numbers of guys that are leaving early.
Read Q&A: Clark Kellogg talks Final Four, Kentucky’s one-and-done stars and more by clicking here.
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