A dreary day of relentless rain sets the perfect mood for how Big Blue Nation feels on this start of NCAA Tournament week. Instead of projecting how the Cats can make a Final Four run, Cat fans are left to lament an NIT road trip to play Robert Morris.
How will the Cats do in this tournament? It depends on how they approach it. If you play for Kentucky and there’s a title of some kind to play for, then you should want to win it—and you should want to do all you can to erase the last image your fans have of you, in that loss to Vanderbilt.
But here’s another reason—NBA scouts and GMs will be watching, to see how you respond to this particular instance of adversity, when there are no more second chances to play your way into the NCAA field. These players will someday be playing basketball as a profession, if not in the NBA then in the D-league or overseas and those teams will expect professionalism, which means you run all the way to the finish, whether you can win the race or not.
Had Marquis Teague chosen to stay for one more year (something I would imagine seemed quite possible when he was signed), then Kentucky would likely be in a better place. I think Ryan Harrow is a scoring point guard but he’s not one that excels yet at making those around him better. That’s what this team needed, given it was Calipari’s youngest team of his four at UK, and as hard as Harrow tried, he just couldn’t fill that role—so when his shots weren’t falling, Kentucky tended to struggle.
Sometimes the pieces just don’t quite fit together as well as you would like and that’s how you end up in the NIT. This time next year, we’ll be back in the mode of plotting a course to the Final Four of the NCAA Tournament, but for now, this team should focus on finishing the season with a trip to the NIT’s Final Four in New York.
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—Tom Leach