March Madness team profile: Kentucky Wildcats

This has not been your typical type of season for the Kentucky Wildcats. And by that we mean they’ve only been very good, and not completely dominant. A home loss to Kansas, along with losses to UCLA, Florida, and Louisville aren’t exactly the makings of an embarrassment. All of those teams are ranked, were playing well at the time they met the Wildcats, and all are bound for the NCAA Tournament and looking for success in March. But at Kentucky being very good isn’t enough. You are expected to compete for a national championship every single season.

So why isn’t this Kentucky team as good as the others? Defense. And nowhere was that deficiency on display more than during a very uninspired win at home against a poor LSU team. Twice Kentucky was up by 25 points or more. That’s good, and it shows just how potent this offense is and how good the team can be. But they ended up winning the game by just 7 points, and that’s bad. It shows just how unfocused they can become, how a lack of hustle on the defensive side of the ball creeps into their game far too often, and how they still are letting dumb fouls keep their opponents in games that should be easy wins.

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So why should you still care about Kentucky in the NCAA Tournament? Well, because they’re still Kentucky. They still have that Kentucky swagger. They still have John Calipari as their head coach, and he is as good as they get when it comes to preparing a team in March. And when it comes to the offensive side of the court they score points like an NBA team. They’ve scored as many as 115 in a single game, and freshman phenom Malik Monk scored 47 points against North Carolina – one of the Kentucky’s best and most important regular seasons wins.

When evaluating Kentucky’s March prospects the single most important thing to look at is history. Three times in the past the Wildcats have relied on freshman to score more than 60% of their points on the season – 2011, 2013, and 2014. And each of those freshman reliant teams struggled in the SEC and lost at least 6 games in the conference. But two of them – in 2011 and 2014 – righted the ship in March and made it to the Final Four. The other, the 2013 team, lost top center Nerlens Noel to a torn ACL, so it’s hard to truly know just how far they could have gone with him healthy.

Will this year’s version of Kentucky’s freshman class find similar success in March? Will they rebound from a lackluster January and February, buy into the Calipari system, and make a run at winning Kentucky’s 9th national championship? If Malik Monk stays hot, yes. If Da’Aaron Fox’s ankle holds up, yes. If they play just average defense in the tournament, yes. And as long as the name on the front of the jersey continues to say Kentucky, yes.

Whatever you do, never count out the Wildcats.