Are Kentucky Wildcats Fans Expecting Too Much Out Of Next Year’s Freshmen?

A recent article by ESPN.com’s Eamonn Brennan discussed the way that typical college basketball fans judge incoming freshmen before that player even steps foot onto the court for the upcoming season.  You can find this article here.  Every year there are plenty of players who leave early for the NBA Draft, but not as many of the freshmen are the top overall players as most would think.  Brennan mentions that maybe college basketball fans are putting too much emphasis on the list of top 100 recruits that come into college every year.  Just because a player is in the top 100 recruits, doesn’t make that player an instant success in college.  I think, that as a Kentucky Wildcats fan, I have been spoiled by a coach who recruits fantastic players, and develops those players even more than you would expect.

Since Coach Cal has come to UK, the influx of fantastic recruits has become something that Wildcat fans have grown accustomed to, but these same fans need to realize that not every recruit can live up to the players from the year before.  The first season that Coach Cal was here, the two recruits that had the biggest impact were John Wall and DeMarcus Cousins, and the next season it was Brandon Knight and Terrence Jones.  However, just because those players made it to the Final Four, does that really mean that fans expected them to go that far in the first place? Last season, the Wildcats had three freshmen in the starting five, with Anthony Davis, Michael Kidd-Gilchrist, and Marquis Teague.  Many wanted Marquis Teague to live up to the bill that was left by John Wall and Brandon Knight in the previous two years, and in many ways, he did.  However, if you look at his production offensively, he simply wasn’t the player that Wall and Knight were.  Teague was helped out by the fact that he was surrounded by some of the best players in the nation, but that leaves the question for next year’s team.  Will next year’s team live up to all the hype that has surrounded Kentucky basketball in the past couple of years?

Coach Cal has again brought in one of the nation’s top recruiting classes, but with arguably the best and most successful class in college basketball history being the heart and soul of last year’s team, it will obviously be hard to live up to those same expectations.  That may be the thing that Kentucky fans need to remember the most going into next season.  Nerlens Noel has a ton of hype surrounding him as the next Anthony Davis, but the thing is, Anthony Davis isn’t a player that you can just replace.  Noel will have to be his own player and develop his own set of skills, fitting in to what this particular team needs him to be.  Alex Poythress has gained the reputation of being the guy that comes in to take the spot of Michael Kidd-Gilchrist with his motor and offensive spark; however, the mentality that Noel needs to take is the same for Poythress.  Wildcat fans cannot expect for Poythress to immediately step in to MKG’s spot and be as productive as MKG was.

Next year’s incoming freshmen will have to go through the same growing pains that any freshmen do, and it will take a while before they start rolling on all cylinders.  Wildcat fans need to keep in mind that there are a lot of new pieces to this team that were filled on last year’s team.  The Wildcats lose Anthony Davis, Michael Kidd-Gilchrist, Marquis Teague, Terrence Jones, Doron Lamb, Darius Miller, and Eloy Vargas from last year’s team.  That is where Nerlens Noel, Archie Goodwin, Alex Poythress, Willie Cauley, Julius Mays, and Ryan Harrow come in.  The Cats return only one player who received any real playing time last year, in Kyle Wiltjer, who will be looked at to provide a lot of offense for next year’s team.  The freshmen, Noel, Goodwin, Poythress, and Cauley cannot be looked at to be as dominant as this year’s freshmen were.  Just because they are top ranked recruits, doesn’t immediately make them top players in the nation.  Just something to contemplate during the summer while waiting for Wildcats’ sports to start up again.