Like it is

Critics take shots at Kentucky, miss mark

Kentucky's Trey Lyles plays during an NCAA college basketball game, Saturday, Feb. 28, 2015, in Lexington, Ky. Kentucky won 84-67. (AP Photo/James Crisp)

It has almost become a March ritual, like when Kelvin Sampson was the head coach at Oklahoma and jobs would come open, somehow his name always got mentioned.

Once, in Orlando, Fla., at the AAU Nationals, Eddie Sutton, who was then the coach at Oklahoma State, walked by Sampson and said, "Kelvin, I heard Ball State was open. You a candidate for that job, too?"

The latest thing is for some publication to rip Kentucky basketball for being a one-and-done program. Last Friday, Rolling Stone's online edition had a story with this headline: "Is Kentucky Killing College Basketball?"

In the story, writer Michael Weinreb called Wildcats basketball "naked capitalism."

A few other writers reacted, as you would imagine, and defended the way Kentucky Coach John Calipari has embraced getting some of the nation's best players, getting a season's worth of victories out of them, and patting them on the back as they headed off to the NBA as a 19- or 20-year-old.

They pointed out that the Harrison twins, Andrew and Aaron, returned for their sophomore seasons, and Willie Cauley-Stein is a junior. Dakari Johnson is also a sophomore.

The other half of the eight-man rotation is made up of freshmen.

All eight will be in the NBA next year if they want, and Calipari will sign a bunch more high school All-Americans and do it again.

That is, unless the NCAA makes freshmen ineligible, which has been whispered among coaches, or the NBA decides to go ahead and draft kids right out of high school again.

Regardless of whether you like Calipari, who holds the unofficial record of having to vacate Final Four appearances at more than one school (Memphis and UMass), he probably has another NCAA championship team this year.

Arkansas is probably the SEC's second-best team, and last Saturday the Wildcats led it 78-47 with 8:01 to play. That 31 -point lead would shrink to 84-67 by the end of the game.

Losing by 17 at Lexington to No. 1 and undefeated Kentucky will go in the books as a quality loss. In other words, it won't affect the Razorbacks when the NCAA Tournament announces its field a week from this Sunday.

What the Hogs need to do is put the loss at Kentucky behind them and take care of their final two regular-season games. Winning Thursday at South Carolina and Saturday at home against LSU would leave them in a good position with the NCAA regardless of what happens in the SEC Tournament.

Winning the final two games of the regular season won't be easy. The Razorbacks face the Gamecocks at 6 p.m. on Thursday and 43 hours later take on the Tigers, who are very athletic and could be a bad matchup if the Hogs are a little tired.

A victory over South Carolina clinches second place, though.

One victory in the SEC Tournament probably leaves the Hogs as a No. 5 seed. Two victories possibly moves them up to a No. 4 regardless of how the championship game turns out, which should be won by the Wildcats.

Kentucky is the team to beat, and going undefeated looks like a strong possibility because there is no drop-off in its eight-man rotation.

Wichita State entered the NCAA Tournament undefeated last season and was a No. 1 seed but was beaten in its second game by No. 8 seed Kentucky, which went to the championship game.

The only other team during the past 15 years to finish the regular season undefeated was St. Joseph's in 2004, and it lost in its conference tournament. Only seven times has any team gone undefeated while winning the NCAA Tournament: San Francisco, 1956; North Carolina, 1957; UCLA, 1964, 1967, 1972 and 1973; and Indiana in 1976.

This could be a historic year, whether you like Cal and the 'Cats or not.

Sports on 03/03/2015