BY RICK BURCHFIELD
There’s a buzz about Lexington as of late. Yes, you must know by now our beloved Wildcats have made it to the 2011 NCAA Final Four. This is the first time that Kentucky has been back in 13 years, the last time being 1998, and oh yeah, they brought home a national championship that year too. We’re just hours away from the headline match-up between Kentucky and Connecticut, which has undoubtedly overshadowed the other two teams rounding out the four, a game featuring the Bulldogs of Butler and the Virgina Commonwealth Rams on the other side of the bracket. But let’s stick to what really matters, the game in which most experts favor the winner to prevail in the national championship game, Kentucky versus Connecticut.
Throughout what a lot are calling a “turn around” season for the Cats, Kentucky has had a, lets say, lack luster season. Kentucky made it to the final game of their preseason tournament, the Maui Invitational, where they met, you guessed it, Connecticut, and their star point guard Kemba Walker. In that game Kentucky was outscored 84 – 67, finishing runner-up to the Huskies. After that, it was an up and down season, later losing to North Carolina, and in their SEC conference opener against Georgia, both away games. Speaking of away games, every loss Kentucky suffered this season happened while they were on the road, a monkey that the Cats just couldn’t shake off their back. On the plus side, they didn’t lose a single game at home in Lexington’s Rupp Arena and finished the regular season with a 25-8 record, 10-6 in conference play. But as the season ended and the SEC tournament began, we saw a new team emerge. Since Kentucky’s last loss to Arkansas, they have won 10 straight, including an SEC tournament championship and their current run in NCAA tournament thus far.
Back to this weekends game against UConn, college basketball experts have been referring back to the Cats’ first loss to Connecticut and how the Cats were just over matched and out played. But what those college basketball experts will also tell you is that the key to Kentucky’s success recently is their strength on defense, the ability to shut down the opposing teams key player(s), and the development of players like Josh Harrellson, Brandon Knight, and Doron Lamb.
So, I’ve crunched the numbers and looked at the facts, and they are absolutely correct. I guess that’s why they call them experts after all. Since the beginning of their current winning streak, not one team has scored more than 70 points on the Wildcats. In fact, the closest a team has gotten to breaking that number was North Carolina in their last game in the elite eight, the final score being 76-69. In Kentucky’s last 10 games, their opponents have scored an average of 61.9 points per game. In that time the Wildcats scored an average of 69.3 points per game. Since the start of the NCAA tournament, their opponents have scored an average of 62.25 points per game, while Kentucky has been putting up an average of 67. Given Kentucky’s defensive track record in their last 10 games, and looking back to their first match-up with UConn, the 61.9 average is a far cry from the 84 points the Huskies scored against the Cats at the beginning of the season, that’s 22.1 point difference. Yeah! Quite a significant margin, especially looking back and seeing that Kentucky lost to UConn by 17 the first go ’round.
Most will tell you that the Kentucky team you see now is not the same team we saw in Maui. According to head coach John Calipari, they have grown as a team and matured a lot since November. He says that a lot depends on the “heroes” on the Kentucky side. Players like Darrius Miller and DeAndre Liggins, who step up in key moments of the game to accompany the outstanding play of Knight and Harrellson lately. And let’s not forget about Terrance Jones, the star freshman who came in to the spotlight early in the season. Jones isn’t putting up the numbers he did early on, but coach Calipari says Jones has relinquished his role as the premier player for Kentucky, and is making contributions in other ways and is a big part of why Kentucky is such a hot team right now.
Here in the Bluegrass we are a prideful people. In Kentucky, Wildcats basketball is King and everything else falls to the wayside. They have waited a long 13 years for this moment to come back, being in a position to win yet another national title, having won seven so far. Kentucky is considered the greatest tradition in college basketball and they have a fan base to prove it. Lexington, and the whole state of Kentucky for that matter, is truly ready to embrace this opportunity. I see signature royal blue – excuse me – I meant ‘Kentucky blue,’ t-shirts all the time the read, “Got Eight?.” Well, maybe. They say defense wins championships. I think I speak for all the ‘Big Blue Nation’ when I say, man I sure do hope so.

• Kentucky and UConn are set to tip-off at 8:49pm EST, Saturday, April 2. (If your not lucky enough to catch the game in one of the seats in Reliant Stadium in Houston, TX you can catch the Cats’ on CBS.