Kentucky Wildcats perfect season would be welcomed by 1976 Indiana Hoosiers

1 of 2

More from March Madness

As a lifetime and long-suffering Miami Dolphins fan, I still hold to the Dolphins perfect 1972 season and do not want to see another team duplicate the feat. The members of the ’72 Dolphins seem to be the same way and openly celebrate with champagne bottles every time the last undefeated NFL team falls. And to be honest, I kind of thought that the members of the 1976 Indiana Hoosiers would be the same way but it turns out that I was wrong. Turns out that Quinn Buckner and other members of that Hoosier club are not only OK with UK joining them in the perfect club, but rooting for it. DO note that Bobby Knight was not interviewed for this story however …

"“These are young people who have a terrific opportunity to do something great,” said Buckner, an Olympic gold medalist, an NBA champion with the Boston Celtics and now a TV analyst for the Indiana Pacers. “I think for me and my teammates, it’s hard to pull against young people.” —– “We had a lot of years to get right what our coach wanted us to get right,” Hoosiers swingman Bobby Wilkerson said. “These guys have had one or two years, most of them, to get right what coach [John] Calipari wants them to get right, which is a cool accomplishment because we needed all the coaching we could get.” Kentucky took on Kansas, UCLA, North Carolina and Louisville before January, blowing through the SEC and surviving a close call against Notre Dame on Sunday. “My hat’s off to them if they make it because they’ll be in great company,” Wilkerson said. “I don’t know if they’ll last as long as we did, but they can’t take our place.”"

Mandatory Credit: Christopher Hanewinckel-USA TODAY Sports

As we all know, John Calipari received the NABC Coach of the Year Award yesterday and is up for a few more individual honors as well, including inclusion into the Hall of Fame. If his Kentucky Wildcats continue with their quest for perfection, Bob Rotella deserves an assist.

Who?

Rotella is one of the world’s preeminent sports psychologists and has been one of Cal’s personal confidants since the UMass days. And it turns out, he has been one of the factors behind the ego checking and unselfishness of this team. Remember in the preseason, when the “experts” predicted infighting and player unhappiness with playing time?

"But that’s not how it’s worked at Kentucky. The Wildcats boast 10 potential NBA players, yet no one on this team averages more than 26 minutes per game; no player averages more than 11 points. And they’re 38-0 as a team, two games away from completing the first perfect season since 1976. The key is unselfishness, and the one who helps unlock that? Rotella. He’s made four in-season trips to Lexington, Ky., plus countless phone calls to both coaches and players when he’s not around. “The challenge, ultimately, is to get really talented people to go after it that intensely, with that much energy,” Rotella said. It’s a challenge many outsiders didn’t think Calipari and his players could handle, not with this many supremely talented and presumably ego-centric players. That doubt only fueled Calipari, and led him to his experimentation with his platoon system."

The story of the 2014-15 Kentucky Wildcats basketball team will be written soon and several players will move on to the NBA. And a new crop of freshmen will gather in Lexington and the whole debate about playing time can resurface among the pundits. One player that seems ready for the competition is Isaiah Briscoe and he is coming to Lexington with the right mentality. He is not worried about the competition and wants the best players to join him at Kentucky.

"He’s also excited to see who joins him in Lexington. Tyler Ulis will almost certainly be back. Briscoe said the freshman is “like a big brother,” crediting Ulis for making him feel welcome at UK despite playing the same position. Another indication of Briscoe’s competitive edge: He’s actively recruiting Newman — the nation’s top-ranked guard — to come with him, even though Newman has said he’d like to run the point in college. Ulis, Briscoe and Newman would make for a pretty great list of playmakers. No matter who he plays alongside next season, Briscoe has another list in mind: the one Coach John Calipari uses on the recruiting trail. “I want to be the next one,” Briscoe said. “So now, next year, when he goes to recruit the next great guard, he says, ‘John Wall, Eric Bledsoe, Derrick Rose, Isaiah Briscoe.’ “Whenever they say Coach Cal has great point guards, I just want them to always think about Isaiah Briscoe.”"

Home/March Madness