Man, what an exciting team. The offense has just been a revelation. There were certainly some lows this year (bad losses at home, missed opportunities to snag resume-building wins), but also some incredible highs, culminating with the absolutely FANTASTIC win at UT yesterday.
First, my thoughts on this season in a vacuum:
The good:
The bad:
So that’s my perspective on the season in a vacuum - meaning, if you JUST looked at the season without any surrounding context. My opinion on it from a long term, big picture perspective….
First, my thoughts on this season in a vacuum:
The good:
- The offense was just ah-maz-ing. It’s the best shooting team of calipari’s time at Kentucky and I don’t know that it’s particularly close. We’re currently number one in the country in all of college basketball outside shooting percentage.
- The individual pieces back that up. Reed is in all likelihood going to end up shooting above 50% from outside on the season. Are you kidding me?
- Maybe the biggest change to me is our number of 3PAs. We were very frequently towards the very bottom of college basketball for a large portion of Cals career. This year, we’re 94
- Cal deserves a lot of credit for building this roster and for hitting the right notes to get this offense humming.
- What a joy Reeves has been. Everyone knew he could get hot and fill it up from outside, but the way he’s added to his repertoire and become such a dependable piece has made a huuuuge difference. He’s so much more consistent and well rounded than he was last year.
- We had some fantastic regular season wins. At Auburn, at Tennessee, UNC in Atlanta. Really, really fun games to get the dub.
- As of the close of the regular season, we didn’t lose any ground to Kansas in the all time wins race; in fact, we actually gained a game.
- As I note below, there were some downswings during the year; BUT, we’re on a hot streak now - at the exact right time you want to be peaking and showing an ability to string together wins. Personally, I said the UT game was THE test for whether this team had finally broken through, and they passed with flying colors.
The bad:
- From a resume perspective, we took some Ls that I personally felt we shouldn’t have lost. UNCW at home. At LSU. Etc.
- With that said, reasonable people can disagree about what losses were “acceptable.” For example, some people would say that UNCW ended up not being THAT bad of a team.
- From just a team strengths/weaknesses perspective, the defense is just….bleh. Hanging on by a thread to the top 100 in KenPom.
- Don’t know what the answer really is there. For a long time I thought more Ugo was our best shot to improve there. In some ways, I still think that he’s our best option. But the reality is none of our bigs are consistent enough from game to game to say “this is the guy who needs the lion’s share of the minutes.”
So that’s my perspective on the season in a vacuum - meaning, if you JUST looked at the season without any surrounding context. My opinion on it from a long term, big picture perspective….
- Look, I’ve made no bones about the fact that I think the last three years in total have just not even been close to good enough. I think they were so bad that they warranted termination (except for the lifetime contract).
- With that in mind, while the regular season was pretty good, overall, it wasn’t quite up to what I thought was enough. No SEC title - tied for the longest streak without at least a share of the SEC by a single UK coach since Rupp. No one seed. Just not an “elite” team.
- I realize a lot of people will think that’s an unreasonably high standard. That’s fine. I just think that that’s how bad the last three years were overall.
- Of course, that’s just my view on the regular season. I value the regular season and the post season about equally, 50-50, which means there’s still a solid chance to make this a GREAT year overall.
- It was interesting that we’ve ended up having some freshmen who I’d count as some of the best players in the nation - Reed, Dilly - but that actually WERENT the most heralded from the recruiting class. I don’t think there’s anything significant to draw from that, except that recruiting rankings, while usually pretty helpful, aren’t perfect.
