The Kentucky Wildcats have turned out to be pretty good at hurling a basketball toward the general direction of a hoop this season. They have also managed to be even better at stopping their opponents from doing that same exact thing. All this is not incredibly surprising considering John Calipari lands — approximately — eleventy-billion tippy-top recruits each year. Good times.
Kentucky has reached the point, though, when everyone has — or at least should have — dropped the debate over “just how good they are.” I mean, unless the discussion is being had with a historical landscape as its backing, there is really no need to ask if the Club State Pool Cleaners are better than the Wildcats.
Still, because it is Kentucky, Calipari and Big Blue Nation, things need to be talked about even to the point of nausea, which often brings up the topic of the team going undefeated. That’s a fair discussion, too. Considering that no team has gone wire-to-wire without a loss since well before Bobby Knight was doing his get-off-his-lawn routine on national TV, Kentucky travelling around with a win-only record is kind of a big deal.
It is the kind of big deal that feels similar to the New England Patriots’ run before some guy managed to catch a football with a helmet. It also feels like the same kind of big deal when compared to other non-college basketball examples as well. Essentially, this is the case because Kentucky is undefeated. Unless the Cats falter, every game they play in will have that big-deal feel hovering around it like a bad stench from last night’s drunken bender. Think Marty Jannetty getting thrown through the Barber Shop Window by his longtime friend. Or, for our non wrestling readers: (Whatever) God you worship coming to your street to challenge the toughest guy on the block to a game of Checkers — kind of a big deal.
Unfortunately for the experience, though, many of the games won’t feel like big deals just mere moments after tip. Outside a February 28 game against a really solid Arkansas team, Kentucky won’t play another high-quality opponent until some point in the SEC tournament. That’s three out of the next four games that are sure to be junkers, with a possibility of a few more in the SEC tournament thrown in, but there’s also a chance of Kentucky going full Gary Busey (never go full Busey) and deciding to go so hard that teams like Arkansas; other SEC foes; and opponents in the first two rounds of the NCAA tournament can look more like the end of a bad horror movie than they do like a sporting competition.
That is what tends to happen when you have the best team in the country, getting better as the season progresses because the roster was so young to begin with, playing in a not-so-great basketball league. Couple that, presumably, with being granted the number one overall seed in the NCAA tournament, and it becomes evident that Kentucky is as scary as anything out there.
At this point it could be safe to say that things usually deemed too dangerous would now be considered run-of-the-mill when compared to the Wildcats. Whether it is dancing naked in the middle of the street while juggling live lobsters to entertain your in-laws, or spelunking the inside of a shark’s mouth, both seem tame when compared to playing Kentucky. Really, it is what it is until someone proves that Kentucky isn’t.
None of that means the Wildcats are unbeatable, or that you shouldn’t still be weary of doing things to impress your stupid father-in-law, or that things can’t change as early as the very next basketball game Kentucky plays. Yet, because we live in a right-now world that we can only view through the lenses of facts, perception and happenstance, Kentucky is the best thing since sliced bread.
Which begs me to ask the question: What was the best thing before sliced bread anyways?
Nevertheless, unless you are a card carrying member of Big Blue Nation, chances are you are not rooting for the Wildcats to make it through the rest of the way unscathed. If you happen to be a fan of history, however, it would be a neat thing to be accomplished so long after the last time it happened (39 years). Heck, maybe even if you hate Kentucky and could not care less for history, you are still rooting for Kentucky to go without a loss for a long stretch, all because you want a huge, undefeated villain late in the NCAA Tournament.
All three of the above ideas, though, might collectively represent the scariest thing about this whole Kentucky run. You know, people rooting for them because of their own selfish reasons.
Kentucky Wildcats Basketball (n.) – A thing that brings the world together because it is scary to be against.
Example in a sentence: The Kentucky Wildcats basketball team is going to steal your girl while dropping dunks all over your cranium — for the pleasure of OTHER people.
