The Kentucky Wildcats are Beatable, but will Anyone Beat Them?

The Kentucky Wildcats are historically good. It’s a conclusion that everyone has come to months ago. But like any other historically great basketball team, they can be beaten.

Kentucky, although contrary to popular belief, is the epitome of the mantra ‘nobody is perfect’.

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The Wildcats are undoubtedly the best assemblance of talent in at least the last decade. A couple of years of having the nation’s best recruiting class will get you to that point. But yet, with all the talent and star power on the roster, they have still shown peeps of imperfection.

Columbia, a team that would ultimately finish 5th in the Ivy League, trotted into Lexington and held a lead for the entire first half against the Wildcats. Ole Miss and Texas A&M pushed the Cats’ to back-to-back overtime games in the earlier chunk of conference play. Just two days ago, I was unsure if the Cats’ would ever pull away from Cincinnati.

Although Kentucky has proven that they are beatable time and time again, can any team that is still in the championship race get the best of them? Simply put, no.

West Virginia, Notre Dame, Wichita State, Wisconsin, North Carolina, Xavier, Arizona, Louisville, Oklahoma, Michigan State, Duke, Utah, UCLA, Gonzaga are the teams still alive and looking to win a championship. Only one team has the firepower to best the Cats’.

Duke, a team featuring a whopping 9 all-americans, is the only squad that has the talent to topple Kentucky. Jahlil Okafor, the favorite to be the top pick in this year’s NBA draft, along with Marshall Plumlee could answer the threat that big-duo Willie Cauley-Stein and Karl Anthony-Towns pose in the paint. Tyus Jones and Quin Cook against the Harrison Twins would be a matchup of a lifetime.

The biggest thing Kentucky has going for them in every matchup they have had or will face is their depth. The platoon system has been perfectly used by Calipari to distribute time between his army of all-american talent. they’re like reinforcements in military terms, or in his words, they’re like “tanks rolling over the hill”. When you have 5 guys fresh and ready to take the floor at any given moment, you just wear teams down. There is no defense against depth. The only thing you can do is pack some extra Gatorade and hope it does the job.

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The Wildcats have flexed their depth throughout the season. Wins over Columbia, Louisville, Ole Miss, Texas A&M, LSU and Arkansas are arguably only wins because of the crazy depth the Cats’ boast. Teams simply just get too tired to keep fighting.

This brings us back to the question. Who currently still alive can beat Kentucky?

As I said, Duke does have the talent. There is no doubt about that. But having only 11 players on the roster, what will they do in crunch time when they’ve run out of gas? And more especially, how will they hold a lead against a team who stays fresh for 40 minutes?

To be blunt, they won’t be able to do anything but sit back and watch.

There isn’t a team left in the tournament that can handle Kentucky’s depth. Come April, Kentucky will be crowned champions.

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