Kentucky Vs. Louisville – What If?
By Paul Jordan
Everyone remembers what this picture is from, John Calipari making what I call his “Patton” speech from the podium at last year’s Big Blue Madness. Amazing stuff that was. But, as we do from time to time, I want to play a “What If?” game with you. And this one has a direct effect on tomorrow’s game with the Louisville Cardinals. To start this story properly, we must travel back in time to the fall of 1996. The Kentucky Wildcats are National Champions. They have just completed an amazing season and are reloaded and ready for the follow up campaign and looking to take another National Title. Then disaster strikes, players get hurt, Kentucky plays shorthanded all-season , but makes it to the NCAA tournament, only to come up short in overtime to Arizona. But what if that loss to Arizona never happened? And what triggered that loss?
For the purpose of this discussion I am attributing that loss to Arizona to the one factor that almost everyone in college basketball agreed on that year. If Derek Anderson does not get hurt and tear his ACL, the Cats are once again National Champions. And that my friends, triggers an entirely new reality, one where the world of the Kentucky Wildcats is completely different.
The Kentucky Wildcats with Derek Anderson run the table in the NCAA tournament. The game with Arizona is not even close and UK is once again crowned with it’s 7th National Championship.
The teams are scrambling like crazy to get a piece of Rick Pitino, however C.M. Newton, seeing another UK dynasty in the making, makes Pitino the offer to become the highest paid coach in all of basketball, both College and Professional to stay at UK. Pitino accepts, and the Wildcats go on to win again in 1998. Pitino starts a recruiting run that gets him the very best players in the history of the program over the next 12 years, and he accomplishes much, including 3 more National Championships and a string of 15 straight SEC titles. Kentucky becomes the first team to 2000 wins in 2008, Pitino can boast of no less than 26 players in the NBA at one time, and is considered to be the greatest college basketball coach of all time. Kentucky becomes the elite of the elite in College Basketball having been in the final four an amazing 12 out of 14 years between 1996 and 2010. With Pitino’s last National Championship coming in 2007, he is primed for another run in 2010.
He has produced no less than 7 college basketball coaches in Division I, all of whom have faced him in the NCAA tournament, and one has even beaten him for his first title. Tubby Smith has taken the Kansas Jayhawks to the title twice since taking over in 1999.
On the flip side of this equation is John Calipari. Fresh off of his 1996 Final Four run, after which Calipari makes the statement that “he really would like to coach at Kentucky some day”, Calipari is hired to coach the Boston Celtics. He joins the Celtics and manages to make three deep runs into the playoffs before he is let go in 2001 after Boston finishes a disappointing 6th in their division. At the same time Calipari is being let go by Boston, The University of Louisville has felt the loss of Denny Crum after his retirement and is looking to make a big time hire. Enter John Calipari. Fresh off of a fairly successful run as the Celtics coach, he comes into Louisville vowing to defeat Pitino and Kentucky.
Calipari is immediately successful in drawing big name recruits to Louisville. He puts the Cards back into the NCAA tourney in his first year, and narrowly misses knocking off Kentucky at Rupp arena. Building on that, he brings in the 2nd best recruiting class in the country the next year behind Kentucky’s Rick Pitino. This continues the rivalry stronger than ever. Kentucky defeats Louisville the next two years on last second shots, and then Calipari steals one in Rupp and goes on to meet Kentucky again in the Final Four. The battle is epic, but the Cats beat the cards en route to their 10th N.C. Calipari gets his revenge the following year though, as he defeats UK in the regular season match up, and takes advantage of the Cats stumbling in the Final Four to win his first N.C. That Final Four is distinct as it put two coaches, Pitino and Calipari against two of their former assistants, Smith and Billy Donovan, who by some odd coincidence, ended up as an assistant for both coaches before taking over the much maligned North Carolina program after Roy Williams resigned during an NCAA investigation. Donovan left UK in 2002 and worked as an assistant under Calipari until taking the North Carolina job in 2008.
All of which leads us to tomorrow’s game. Calipari will bring his undefeated and no.1 ranked recruiting class onto Denny Crum Court in Ford Arena in Louisville against Rick Pitino and his hungry Kentucky Wildcats who are ranked #2 in the nation. With Louisville being ranked #4 this game should be one for the ages. Kentucky brings in an amazing young kid from Turkey named Enes Kanter, who will be playing in his first game this year after serving a suspension from the NCAA due to his having received improper benefits while a member of the Turkish team Fehnerbance. Louisville and their point guard Brandon Knight are going to be a tough game for the Cats, who lost their only game by one point to Donovan’s Tar Heels when Center DeMarcus Cousins missed a pair of FT’s with no time remaining in Chapel Hill just a week earlier.
Pitino has announced that this will be his last year as the Kentucky coach, as he will be joining the CBS broadcasting booth next year. Pitino was quoted as saying, ” Since C.M. left, this double duty as AD and Head Coach has been wearing on me. And although we have been extremely successful, I just feel like it is time to walk away now, while I still feel like I am at the top of my profession. All this time at Kentucky has been just amazing for me, and I would not have traded it for all the money in the world.” It has been wildly rumored that the job has already been offered to Calipari, who claims he has not been contacted by anyone.
But in this world who knows?
Keep following www.http://wildcatbluenation.com for the best in Kentucky basketball and football news, rumors, and opinions. By Kentucky fans for Kentucky fans