NEW ORLEANS – Ultimately, all the University of Kentucky Wildcats did during the 21 days of the NCAA Tournament – and especially Monday night in the Mercedes-Benz Superdome – was confirm what anyone who follows the sports with a balanced perspective figured for the better part of 2012:
John Calipari was coaching far and away the best collection of players in college hoops this season.
Uh, let me rephrase that:
He was coaching the best team – in every best sense of the word – in the country.
And, without much discussion necessary, we can amend that to in many seasons following the Wildcats’ 67-59 championship performance against a Kansas team that was able to do what few could have done in its place Monday night – it kept from collapsing even when it appeared as if was headed for a 20-something-point loss.
This team’s collective legacy should be much more than memories of the remarkable performance of a player whose individual legacy will be that as one of the dominant and magnificent players in a long while.
How will Anthony Davis’ freshman performance and college career be measured against comparably sized (he’s about 6-foot-10; he only PLAYS like he’s about a foot taller) big men that have graced the college game, be it Bill Russell, Wilt Chamberlain, Kareem Abdul-Jabbar, Bill Walton, Patrick Ewing, Hakeem Olajuwon, Shaquille O’Neal and Tim Duncan?
As a freshmen playing on the varsity, I don’t think anyone has been better – and, yes, for those wondering I include O’Neal in that category and, for those who’ve forgotten, Russell, Chamberlain, Abdul-Jabbar (he was known as Lew Alcindor at UCLA) and Walton played in eras during which freshmen were not eligible for varsity competition.
We’ll never be able to have a reasonable measure for how his college career stacked up against theirs because we watched his college career come to an end the millisecond the final buzzer sounded, triggering the fireworks and cascading confetti.
One thing I’m certain of: Davis was the best college shot blocker/post defender I’ve seen since Walton dominated a much stronger brand of competition during his 1971-74 varsity seasons under the late John Wooden at UCLA.
But the players around Davis deserve an immense amount of short- and long-term admiration – not just from among those in the Bluegrass Nation but from anyone who has an unpolluted passion for the sport.
This group of players should be recognized as more than the answer to the trivia question “what program became the first from which the NBA picked six players in a first round of its draft?” as well.
Freshmen Michael Kidd-Gilchrist, Marquis Teague and Kyle Wiltjer, sophomores Doron Lamb and Terrence Jones and senior Darius Miller joined Davis in willfully and effectively subjugated their egos to blend their considerable individual skills to play unselfishly, and with consistency of effort, in order to comprise a team that proved to be every bit the sum of its mind-boggling individual talents.
And all of the kudos tossed his way were well-earned by John Calipari.
Did he have more “talent” than any other coach in the sport this season? He absolutely did.
But the most “talented” teams don’t always win championships. His first Kentucky squad (two years ago; it sure seems a lot longer than that, doesn’t it?) was led by five players who were chosen in the first round of the 2010 draft but was bounced in a regional final by a West Virginia squad that had just a second-round pick that season.
Recruiting that kind of talent and molding it into an unselfish, cohesive championship winner is another.
One would really have to nit-pick to watch the Wildcats play through most of this season and find many criticisms about how Calipari coached them.
How does this team stack of against some of the better ones I’ve watched win national titles since I began covering (up-close-and-personal) Final Fours in 1986?
Hmmm . . . let me allow that topic percolate in my noggin for a while before I pour a cup’s worth of opinion.
But the Wildcats removed any doubt – no matter how lukewarm it was going into Monday night – about how they stacked up against the 2011-12 field.
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