By Travis Durden

They say defense wins championships don’t they?  Some may even argue that leadership or toughness does.  Others contend its simply overall talent or coaching that wins championships.  However you look at, it doesn’t matter which clichéd word you use to “fill in the blank”……This year’s Kentucky Wildcats basketball team dominates them all.  That’s why in early April, NCAA will crown Kentucky Basketball Champion once again.

Want proof?

Let’s start with DEFENSE.  Why not, it’s the most used term associated with winning championships.  It’s also the easiest to prove for Kentucky.  Kentucky is unquestionably THE best defensive team in the country and possibly one of the best defensive teams we’ve seen in many years at any school.  Anthony Davis is a blocking machine (140 blks in 30 games) and does not seem to be stopping anytime soon.  He’s already broken the freshman record for blocks and will likely finish just shy of the all-time single-season mark.  Sure, he’s blocking a lot of shots, but he is altering even more.  Davis is making talented athletes decide they just flat-out don’t want to shoot when they see him near.  I’m talking about 6’9” rock-solid athletes pump-faking and dishing out to the perimeter from under the goal.  Davis will easily win defensive player of the year and is neck and neck with Thomas Robinson for National Player of the Year, due mostly to his unbelievable defensive numbers.

That would be enough to consider Kentucky worthy of a top defense good enough to win a championship, but there are other stellar athletes flying around those Kentucky games.  Terrence Jones, atleast when he’s on the good side of being Jekyll/Hide, is a prominent defender himself (averaging 2blks, 1.3 stls).  Add in energetic and lengthy Michael Kidd-Gilchrist (33blks, 35 stls) along with the rest of the NBA 1^st round draft squad and Kentucky is averaging an astonishing 9.1 blks/game and 6.5 steals/game.  This team has already broken the “team single game block record” at Kentucky, Davis is shattering the single season record at Kentucky and as a team, they are likely to break the all-time team record for blocks in a season (315blks – UCONN 2004).  That is one block party no team wants to be invited to.  More importantly, most of these blocks/steals lead directly to immediate points on the other end of the floor.  You could argue there may not be a better transition team in basketball.  If that’s not enough, Kentucky is numero uno in Field Goal Defense (36%), Scoring Margin (19+)  and Blocks/game (9.1)   Let’s say it again to confirm, If Defense wins Championships, then Kentucky has that covered, no question.

Maybe your argument is TOUGHNESS. That’s certainly subjective.  Do you mean mental or physical toughness?  Let’s say your answer is both.  Kentucky has proven it is strong in both.  Sure they were out-toughed in early games and pushed around, but not anymore. Once they figured out that being tackled was an opponents only ilne of defense (example below) they began to expect it and use it for motivation.

In fact, now you could say they’re the ones doing the pushing, or at the very least not sitting for being bullied.  This team is quick to rally around each other, get in the face of an opponent that’s elbowing, thugging or whatever.  And the best part, thanks mostly to MKG (Michael Kidd-Gilchrist) they tend to get focused and excited when this happens.  “You want to push us?  Oh, its because you’re frustrated?  Well you just made it worse.  We are going to pound you now”  seems to be the jawing that occurs now behind over-exaggerated smiles.  Never more was this the case then a home game against a rough-playing Tennessee squad.  The Vols quickly made the game “chippy” and fired up not only a newly found “tough” team, but a crowd that had been salivating for toughness all year.  The Cats smoked Tennessee by 25 only two weeks after barely beating them by 3 in Knoxville. Kentucky has not looked back and now looks to be seeking out contact and smiling through bumps and bruises. Physical toughness?….Check.

Ok, you’re still waiting for the mental part.  That one is easy, these kids deal with rock-star life and fish-bowl environment not just during basketball season…..it’s 365 days a year in Lexington.  I’ve been there, those people are crazy.  I mean that in the good way, the John Calipari “You guys are crazy…and I love it” way.  But that’s not good enough. Surviving rock-star treatment doesn’t necessarily count.  You want to hear about being mentally tough in a road environment.  Sure they struggled a little in their first test at Indiana.  And let’s be honest, that was likely THE BEST road environment anyone we’ll see all year.  The Hoosier players had some Hoosier magic going on and weren’t to be denied.  But , given all of that, this Kentucky fought back, took the lead in a game they had no business winning and eventually lost to a cold-blooded 3-pointer at the buzzer.  You know the one, you’ve seen 1,225 times on ESPN.  Why bring that game up when they lost you ask?  Well, when you analyze mental toughness, you need a breaking point.  A point that you got knocked down.  Knocked down publicly.  A point, for a team that was technically good enough to run the table, to find out even they need to play at the top of their game or they will lose.  A point that gives the detractors something to yap about.  That Indiana loss was that point for these Cats.  They rebounded quickly but weren’t tested much on the road for weeks after.  Until they visited the unfriendly confines of Vanderbilt’s  Memorial Gym in Nashville.  This one had the makings of an upset.  Gameday added to the craziness for the fans, amping them up from 10:00am until the tip finally at 9:00pm.  The media all suddenly spoke up for their upset pick.  This one was easy.  Even the fans conceded this one may be a loss.  As expected, Kentucky, up 13 at one point, suddenly found themselves down 2 (61-63) on the road in one of the oddest/toughest environments to play in.  Is it really fare to have the benches behind the goals?  I digress.  Don’t believe me that’s its not a tough environment, just ask the last four #1 teams that lost there coming into that game.  With the cards stacked against, the newly ‘mentally tough’ Cats didn’t let Vanderbilt score another point.   Not another point.  They hit big shots, big free-throws and played the same lock-down defense that won them the 24 games before and finished 69-63.  Mental Toughness?  Yep.

Oh, so you’re new school and you say TALENT wins championships?  Ok, hmmm, how do I put this without making you sound stupid for asking that question?…..…. I can’t.  Kentucky starts 3 potential lottery picks (Davis, MKG, Jones) and Davis is a lock (throw away the key) for the #1 pick.  Add in potential first rounder’s Marquis Teague, Doron Lamb and one of the most underrated forwards in the game, senior Darius Miller and talent is not in question.  So much so, that some media outlets have even spent time analyzing if this team could beat an NBA team straight up.  Talent is a no-brainer…..let’s move on.

Speaking of that underrated senior, maybe we should look at LEADERSHIP.  This team certainly has it’s “stat” leader in Anthony Davis but its quiet backbone, its rock on the road, is Darius Miller.  Miller never seems to get the credit he deserves, likely because he’s spent his career playing with lottery picks and he isn’t flashy.  Even his “game-winners” aren’t technically at the buzzer (they are around the 3 minute mark and often on the road).  Countless times Miller has been counted on to come in, settle the young team.  He has done it time and time again this year.  And its not just with a big 3 late, its with stifling defense, smart passing and what seems like zero turnovers.   All of that is great, but my guess is that its not quite everything I need to win that argument.  Miller is a leader but he is quiet and has been know to disappear for portions of games too many times.

That being said, I give you Michael Kidd-Gilchrist.  The man, the myth, the motor.  MKG is the absolute motor of the team.  He is a perfect ying to the Miller’s yang.  Miller’s “settling-tone” is needed, especially come tournament time, but MKG’s “tone-setting” is what makes this team dominant.  MKG can put up the numbers (12pts, 8Reb) but its his tenacity and relentlessness on both sides of the court that makes him the team’s true leader.  He is a coaches dream and an announcer’s wet dream.  There are times, when even Kentucky fans are likely to tire of the gushing over MKG for his seemingly unlimited hustle.  After all, they’re used to it.   They see it EVERY game.  Kidd-Gilchrist is a leader, a hustler, a baller, a defender, but most importantly, he’s a winner.  No one follows guys who don’t win.    There have been many times this year when he’s only made a few field goals, yet he’s considered the player of the game because of his tenacity, rebounding, late free-throws and most importantly his ability to shut down the other team’s best player (just ask Dee Bost second-half’s stats).  Leadership, Kentucky has 2 and they are perfectly different.  Check.

What about COACHING?……oh boy, here we go…..I can hear it now.  Cal just rolls the ball out there and let’s those NBA guys throw lobs, drive in and dunk, etc…..Really?  Are we not passed that yet?  Surely we are.  We’re not?  Ok, let me debunk that for you.  Coach Cal has had 3 very distinct teams in his 3 years at Kentucky.  If you didn’t know better, you’d think Kentucky has had 3 different coaches (except for that whole three #1 recruiting classes thing).  Think about it for a second.  The John Wall and Demarcus Cousins crew weren’t equipped properly to run the dribble-drive (Cal’s typical offense).  Cousins was too dominant in the post and Wall was too much of a single-person creator and the team lacked long-range shooters for kick-outs.  Even Cal admitted they only used it 25% of the time.  Cal adjusted to his players, played a completely different offense and took his first Kentucky team to the Elite Eight.  Not bad.  His second team, completely different.  The Brandon Knight led squad did have the shooters in Lamb, Knight and an emerging Darius Miller but didn’t necessarily have the semi-truck down low that was Cousins.  Sure they had a strong presence in Terrence Jones, as well as the one they call “Jorts”, but neither was the post-up and score type.  Let’s sidetrack for a second right there.  Jorts, better known by his parents as Josh Harrellson, was an unneeded, undiscovered talent wasting away on the bench.  His previous coach ignored him and Cal in his first year, never had to look his way with guys like Cousins, Patterson and Orton taking any available playing time for a center/forward.  By all accounts, Harrellson was going to simply coast through his senior year, hope for a few minutes and be forgotten forever.  Enter the master motivator.  After mis-using twitter, Harrellson was “punished” by being banned from twitter and with that extra time he was required to hit the gym before every player for every practice.  The result was an unforgettable senior year that landed him in New York, drafted by the New York Knicks.  Ask a UK fan the possibilities of that at the beginning of the year and you will get “zero” every time.  Now, back to the team.  Coach Cal once again adjusted, getting this team to run his offense probably 50% of the time.  Oddly, and against type though, Coach Cal, known for his run and gun, player friendly basketball, instead mostly played grind-it-out ball under the 10 minute mark.  In nearly every game this team was passing the ball around, running down the defense and utilizing a two-man game on the bench side of the court.  All of the while, Calipari was orchestrating the possession like a maestro on the sideline, only a few feet away.

You may argue he wasn’t a good enough coach to get the players to play his style.  In this day and age that kind of thinking is archaic.  A coach at Kentucky has to win with what he’s got, how he has to, at all cost.  Don’t believe me, just ask Tubby Smith, who famously would not change his system and was criticized in his last years of his tenure for holding back play-makers (i.e. Rajon Rondo).  Calipari, on the other hand unleashes play-makers and last year, smartly reeled them in to close tight games.  That team went to the Final Four.

This 2011-2012 team is playing Cal ball.  He’s got the type of players that fit his system finally and the lobs are flying, the 3’s are dropping and the Defense is……well we covered that.   To me, that’s a description of a great coach.

Need stats?  Look them up, there’s too many to list and this article is already long enough.  The guy hasn’t even lost a game on his home court since becoming coach 3 years ago!

What’s coaching anyways?  Out-of-bounds plays? Adjusting after half?  The dreaded X’s and O’s?  To me, it’s the whole kit and kaboodle.  The CEO.  And John Calipari is one of, if not THE, best CEO’s in college basketball right now.  Again, he’s basically coached 3 teams from scratch and has a winning percentage of 87% at Kentucky.  He’s embarrassingly out-recruited every coach in America the past 3 years and is set to do it again next year.  He’s coaching at the school with the most passionate fans, bringing in the best players and adjusting his on-the-court coaching philosophies to his players for the sake of winning.  This year’s team is 29-1 (15-0 conf) and ranked #1.

Sorry, haters, Kentucky has one of the best coaches in the country.  If coaching is that last ‘fill in the blank’……Kentucky’s got that one too.

If “Defense, Toughness, Talent, Leadership, Coaching” wins championships, this tournament is over before it starts.  The Kentucky Wildcats get #8.

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