Monday night, the University of Kentucky won its 8th national championship, and first since 1998. Coach John Calipari finally won his first national championship, with a team basically consisting of three freshman, two sophomores, and a senior. Somehow, this spells the end of college basketball as we know it, at least according to many bloggers, talking heads, and analysts. People are quick to jump on the bandwagon of some event being the most important thing ever, and this is no different. For a number of reasons, Kentucky’s championship will go down as history as just that, a championship won by a perennial powerhouse (or another vacated Calipari Final Four appearance), not the day college basketball changed forever.
The common perception seems to be that one-and-done’s are the way of the future in college basketball. People think that it’s easy to put together a recruiting class with a few of the top ten players in the nation in the year, help them transition to college life, check their egos at the door, and play good enough team basketball to win the national championship. This is actually a very hard thing to do, and there are many variables that swung Kentucky’s way in order for them to win the championship.
First, and most importantly, look no further than Anthony Davis. Davis was the number one recruit coming out of high school, according to the ESPN rankings, and turned out to be the best player in college basketball. This is very rare. We need to look no further as the previous years can’t-miss recruit, Harrison Barnes, the first freshman to be elected to the preseason All-American team, to recognize possible struggles of a High School stud adjusting to the college game. Before Davis, you have to look back four years to Kevin Love to see a number one overall recruit who made the impact he was supposed to his freshman year, and Davis was even better than him. An additional benefit of Davis is that he is a defensive minded player who doesn’t dominate the ball on offense. This allowed Kentucky to play much better team offense, while many highly recruited freshmen come in as ball dominating gunners who destroy any sense of offensive flow. Similar logic can be applied to Michael Kidd-Gilchrist and Marquis Teague, the numbers 4 and 8 recruits, respectively, who turned out to be better than expectations as well. It is very rare for none of three top ten recruits not only to not flop, but to actually exceed expectations.
Another important factor to remember is that the next most talented team, North Carolina, suffered an injury to point guard Kendall Marshall that killed their season. If not for that broken wrist, Kentucky would have had a far tougher time against them than Kansas. While Kansas is a very tough team with about 2.5 great players, they simply didn’t have the offensive firepower to keep up with the Wildcats. Perhaps the third best team in the country, Syracuse, was crippled by Fab Melo’s suspension. In fact, in the Wildcats march to the national championship, Kansas was the only team they played in the top two seeds. If Kansas had been a bit tougher, been up to the task of putting just a bit more pressure on Kentucky at the end of the game, the Wildcats could have crumbled. Instead, Kansas made mistakes when it mattered most, and Kentucky ran away with the title.
In conclusion, let’s all settle down a bit about the 2012 Kentucky national championship team changing college basketball forever. Let’s just tip our hats to Anthony Davis and the boys, make jokes about how soon the championship will be vacated, and wait until next year to see what’s really changed.
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