Duke Blue Devils: Kevin Knox’s Two Days of Decision
Kentucky Wildcats
Tuesday – 8 PM
If you noticed, I felt that the Seminoles were first because they were least likely to be chosen. I am staying with that logic with the Wildcats. I think a Tuesday meeting shows that they are not really in the running either because their meeting won’t be as fresh when the decision comes.
John Calipari will make the same sale that he makes seemingly every year to a new group of talented freshmen. That sale is, look at the NBA. It is dotted with Kentucky players that play at a high level after they were drafted high. John Wall, Demarcus Cousins, Karl-Anthony Towns, Eric Bledsoe, Anthony Davis, and Devin Booker. What do they all have in common? They all came to Kentucky and spent a year with Coach Cal.
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Not only that, he would say, but they all did it together. Some of those guys weren’t even starters at Kentucky but still had bright Draft nights. He would point out that he is doing it all again this year with four five star recruits and two four star recruits. He won a national title doing it this way, so that he can fit team need and player need for the closest NBA experience outside the NBA.
The SEC will probably come up. While FSU had ACC membership and access to some of the best basketball played in the country, Kentucky has been a lonely tiger beating up its own conference on a regular basis in games that only scouts cared about. Calipari will no doubt push the conference’s increased profile from the last NCAA tourney. Florida and South Carolina will be on the schedule (he will downplay Missouri’s existence) and people will care about those games now.
Besides, Kentucky regularly looks for exposure in the non-conference schedule. Best game of last year: Kentucky-UNC, the first match. The Wildcats will find national exposure.
Calipari’s greatest weakness in this five way consideration is his greatest strength. Are there truly enough basketballs to go around in Lexington? Isn’t Cal’s super-team concept no longer unique in college basketball? Two later schools in the order are also pushing a similar idea, and they might be more needy than Kentucky this off-season.