The power of the unibrow could not be undone, as Kentucky, led by Anthony Davis, rolled through Kansas to take the NCAA men’s basketball title on Monday night. Kentucky barely seemed to break a sweat the entire tournament, causally beating team after team by comfortable margins.
In the first round, the Wildcats beat their in-state “rivals” Western Kentucky by 15, despite seeming to sleepwalk through the first five or six minutes of the game against those “storied” Hilltoppers.
In fact, Anthony Davis seemed annoyed that WKU was even trying to score and blocked seven shots.
Next up was Iowa State, a legitimate Big 12 team that was coming off a win against the University of Connecticut, last year’s champs.
“Iowa State won’t be an easy . . . oh . . . wow that looks really easy actually,” you thought while watching the Wildcats blow them out.
Then there was Indiana. I was actually lucky enough to overhear a conversation between two of Kentucky’s players before the game: Player 1: “Oh, we’re in the Sweet Sixteen?” Player 2: “Yeah. You know what’d be fun?” Player 1: “What?” Player 2: “Let’s score 100 points today!” Player 1: “Yeah, that does sound fun. OK.”
The Wildcats cruised to their third straight double-digit win and were primed for an Elite Eight showdown with Baylor.
I apologize for the build up because it actually wasn’t much of a showdown. Kentucky turned on autopilot and advanced to the Final Four on the strength of its fourth consecutive win by 12 points or more.
It gave up 16 offensive rebounds and had 13 turnovers in that game, but just shrugged and said, “Your point? We’re Kentucky.”
Then came the semis. The Wildcats were set to face an actual in-state rival, Louisville, who had won eight straight games and the Big East along the way – a daunting foe. Well, a daunting foe if you don’t have the future first two overall picks in this year’s NBA draft on the same team.
Louisville kept the game close with an array of gimmicks: full court presses and half-court traps. The Cardinals pulled down 19 offensive rebounds and forced 14 turnovers. Still, the game never felt in jeopardy for the Wildcats. They settled for an eight-point win.
The stage was set. The final would be between two traditional college basketball powers, Kentucky and Kansas. You heard all day Sunday and Monday about how Bill Self’s Kansas team had beaten the John Calipari-led Memphis Tigers in 2008 in the final. Analysts reached for any matchup edge they could to find a way to spin the game in Kansas’s favor.
But from the opening tip, it really wasn’t ever close. Kentucky asserted its will early, built a 14-point lead by halftime and didn’t look back. Sure, Kansas had a run here and there, but that’s inevitable. The game never felt out of Kentucky’s control.
Davis only had six points in the game, but he pulled down 12 rebounds and had four blocks. His unibrow added another four rebounds and two blocks, giving him a total of 16 and six.
He seemed to dominate the game despite shooting just 1-for-10 from the floor – cementing his status as this year’s No. 1 pick in the upcoming NBA draft.
To me, the most remarkable aspect of all this – other than the fact that Davis willingly chooses to rock the single brow on national television – is Calipari and his mastery of the one-and-done aspect of college hoops.
In a basketball landscape where the best players are only playing one year at the collegiate level, making continuity impossible for the top teams, Calipari has coached his teams to seven of the last eight Elite Eights, and three out of the last four Final Fours.
Now Calipari has a championship to boast as well. Through his first two seasons at Kentucky he’d already put nine players in the NBA, seven of which were first round picks, and you can bet that he’ll be putting in several more in the coming draft.
Why wouldn’t you want to play for this guy if you were a top high school basketball player? If you can play, he’ll get you to the NBA. Heck, I’d grow a uni of my own to play for Calipari.
He’s already signed three top recruits for next season, and seems to have an inside track to acquire at least one (if not both) of the first- and second-rated recruits, who are both undecided at this point.
With this dominant championship run, Calipari and Kentucky have affirmed their recruiting pitch and created a college basketball empire on the strength of freshmen All-Americans – spitting in the face of the old cliché that you need experience to win championships.
No, coach Cal and his Wildcats will continue to bank on elite talent, continue to construct one-year-only super teams loaded with first-round NBA picks and continue to be a dominant force of nature in college basketball. Calipari only needed three seasons to reach the pinnacle at Kentucky, and the only thing that could stop him now is his own ambition to return to coaching at the NBA level. The rest of college basketball will keep their collective fingers crossed that he does soon.
This is an account occasionally used by the Daily Free Press editors to post archived posts from previous iterations of the site or otherwise for special circumstance publications. See authorship info on the byline at the top of the page.
