John Calipari’s Kentucky Wildcats are poised to hand Banner #9, pitfalls exist and will Mark Stoops be Head Coach #5?

Though it’s been hotly discussed for months now, John Calipari’s (and the NCAA’s) greatest recruiting class are all on campus in the Blue Grass and ready to dominate.  And no, that’s not hyperbole.  Dominate.  Combine our five (5) McDonald’s All Americans coming in with the couple we already have on the team, add some experience and a future HOF coach and you have a recipe for Banner #9.  Again, that’s not hyperbole.  Gary Parrish, typically guilty of trollenous actions, and a slew of coaches recognize just how great this team can be.

"Kentucky assistant director of media relations John Hayden confirmed to CBSSports.com on Wednesday that the school is one step closer to officially assembling a men’s basketball team that will be favored to win the 2014 national championship. “All of our returning players and signees are enrolled and registered for the fall semester,” Hayden said via text message. And you’re wrong if you don’t think this is big news. Here are two reasons why this is big news: Pretty much everything related to UK hoops is big news. Kentucky’s massive and intense fan base can now relax a little, if possible. We’ve all known for a good while that this version of the Wildcats would be a special group, but the past few months have doubled as anxious months because half of the record six McDonald’s All-Americans that John Calipari signed to national letters of intent didn’t enroll in summer school. So the obvious question was … Why? Why weren’t Andrew and Aaron Harrison taking classes? And what about James Young? UK officials consistently declined to discuss their statuses. School policy and all that. But none of it matters now. The Harrison twins, Young and fellow McDonald’s All-Americans Julius Randle, Dakari Johnson and Marcus Lee are all officially enrolled and on campus in Lexington. Assuming each is eventually cleared by the NCAA to compete as a freshman — and there’s no real reason to assume they won’t collectively be cleared by the NCAA to compete as freshmen — they’ll combine with sophomores Alex Poythress and Willie Cauley-Stein to create what will clearly be the nation’s top roster and should be college basketball’s best team. I realize that last part is debatable — especially after what happened last season. But it should be noted that the CBSSports.com Candid Coaches series concluded last week with a question about the Wildcats — specifically a question about whether they’d be closer to the team that won the 2012 national title or the team that missed the 2013 NCAA tournament — and 87 percent of the men surveyed predicted this would be more like the championship team than the NIT team. One coach called what Calipari has assembled an “embarrassment of riches” before adding “they could lose two of their top eight guys and still be a top-five team.” Another coach noted that Kentucky has “NBA guys at every position, and two at some positions. And they won’t be all young this season. They’re just going to overwhelm most everybody they play.” In other words, if you’re predicting this team to flop like last season’s team then you’re not just arguing with me; you’re also arguing with the overwhelming majority of college basketball coaches, the guys who presumably know and understand the sport better than anybody else."

But even with all the incoming fire power, there will be pitfalls.  I mean, we did manage to get blasted by Robert Morris in the NIT last year after starting the season ranked #3.  Coach Cal constantly pounded the “that’s too high a ranking” drum and while most thought it was coach speak, he was right.  Mike DeCourcy has identified a few things that could postpone our banner hanging ceremony another season but after last year’s failure, I don’t think it happens.  Though it’s worth nothing, what he identifies as a possible hang up is what I called Cal’s greatest coaching strength last week so that sentiment is broad and fair to portray.  But Coach Cal will work it out.

"Primary concern: Building a formula. This is going to be true of every Kentucky team so long as a vast number of its freshman last a single season. It’s not merely a question of building chemistry, which certainly is significant, but at the foundation is the importance of finding a way that this particular group of Wildcats fits together in a winning way. Coach John Calipari lately has not been averse to making substantial changes to his offensive structure in order to maximize the talent on hand—not only from year to year, but after a given season has begun. There has been talk among some who’ve scouted Andrew and Aaron Harrison that they could create chemistry issues for the Wildcats, but consider the challenges DeMarcus Cousins presented in 2009-10, or that many who scouted Marquis Teague voiced similar concerns about him. Calipari is at his best when getting players to invest in his team to suit their own long-term interests. To reach the goals that are available to UK, however, requires a functioning system, an operational chemistry and a sense of leadership in difficult times. That last part might be the most elusive. There are enough players around who’ve been through a disappointing season and won’t wish to endure another. But who steps forward to ensure the Wildcats hang together if they face a desperate moment in the NCAAs?"

On a team full of diamonds, perhaps a “diamond in the rough” who will substantially help this year’s team is walk-on E.J. Floreal.  He wasn’t a vaunted Calipari recruit.  Heck, Cal didn’t call on him until after Floreal’s Dad became the Head Track and Field coach at UK.  Most had never heard of him.  Few know his father, Edrick Floreal, Sr., who was a National Champion in his own right.  So you’re asking, “how can a walk-on frosh help this team?”  Well you have to consider who his parents are and what they accomplished in their athletic careers to really understand that.

"For E.J. Floreal, a walk-on on the 2013-14 Kentucky basketball team, that notion could seem daunting if he lets it. His father, Edrick Floreal Sr., who is in his second year as the head coach of UK’s track and field program, was a two-time Olympian for Canada, won five NCAA individual titles as a college athlete and is in pursuit of a team championship as the head coach at Kentucky. His mother, LaVonna Martin-Floreal, a two-time U.S. Olympian, won the silver medal in the 100-meter hurdles at the 1992 Summer Games in Barcelona, Spain. Even his sister, “Mimi,” who is a few years younger than him, was one of the fastest sprinters in the state last year as a freshman in high school. Suffice it to say, his family is a collection of elite athletes. E.J., no doubt, possesses many of the physical attributes that his parents do – after all, he earned a spot on this year’s mega-talented Wildcat squad – but in a family of standouts, it’s hard to stand out if you’re E.J. Floreal. Between his dad’s championships, his mother’s medal and his sister’s rising talent, there’s a lot of internal competition within the Floreal family. At the very least, it makes for interesting dinner table conversation. E.J. Floreal comes from a family of track superstars, but the basketball court is where he prefers to run the most. “Whenever I try to say something like, ‘Hey mom, I got third in the state,’ she’ll be like, ‘I got an Olympic medal.’ I can’t say nothing to that or my dad will bring up his national championship rings when I try to bring up something that I just did,” Floreal said. That drive to do better still exists today, but it’s matured, become more focused. Floreal, as he started to heed the advice of his parents, learned that it wasn’t so much about living up to his parents’ dream; it was about creating his own. For Floreal, that was going outside the family line of work and choosing his own path in basketball. “I always set out and do things better than them,” Floreal said. “I want to be the best athlete in the family. … (Their success) really motivates me because I want to be the best. I want to be better than they ever were.” When it came time to find a place for Edrick Jr. to play basketball, Edrick Sr. played a significant role.  “He wanted me to go wherever I wanted to be happy,” Floreal said. “I told him that I wanted to just be the best. He told me, ‘What is your goal?’ I said, ‘I want to be the best player that I can be. I want to reach my full potential because I don’t think I’m anywhere close yet.’ He said, ‘Look, I think that you need to go to Kentucky. If that’s what you want to do, you know you can go immediately and play somewhere else, but are you going to get better there?’ I was like, ‘I don’t think I will, not like I will at Kentucky.’ ” Of course, wanting to go to UK and actually playing there were two different concepts. Floreal had options to play other places. He turned down Santa Clara and Cal Poly. Western Kentucky showed interest. Even Tennessee and Arkansas took hard looks at Floreal, and both were potential spots had Floreal not had his sights set on UK. When Floreal weighed all his possibilities, the place that would push him the hardest and force him to improve is what appealed most to him. “I wanted to be the best I could be,” Floreal said. “I wanted to play with the best, practice with the best, work out with the best. This has the best trainers, best facilities, strength coaches, so this is the best place for me. I also wanted to get some experience with a team that’s winning, not a team that’s rebuilding – a team that’s going to go deep into the tournament.” loreal never would have imagined winding up at UK two years ago when he was still in California and his father was the head track and field coach at Stanford. That all changed in between Floreal’s junior and senior seasons of high school when his dad told him he’d been offered the head coaching position at Kentucky, a place he had served as an assistant at from 1996 to 1998. “My face kind of froze and my heart kind of sank and I was just like, ‘Are you serious?’ ” Floreal said. “Like, I’m going into my senior year. I’m having a great year of basketball. The year before, I had just been all-California honorable mention. I was feeling really good about going into my senior year and being able to play whatever position I wanted to. He said, ‘This opportunity just came. It’s much better than what I have here.’ … When Cal, the best recruiter in the country, actually called my dad and said Kentucky wants you really bad, I knew from that point on that he was going to go.”"