NCAA Bracket 2012: 5 Reasons Kentucky Is Guaranteed to Fail

It's difficult to drudge up reasons why Kentucky, which rode a 22-game winning streak into last week's SEC tournament before eventually falling to Vanderbilt in the final, and was the unanimous choice as No. 1 (31 out of 31 votes) in the March 5 ESPN/USA Today Coaches Poll, will not be proudly holding aloft the Wooden trophy come April.

Not only would it be coach John Calipari's first-ever national championship (he has reached two finals in his career—once with Massachusetts in 1996, where interestingly enough he lost to a Rick Pitino-led Kentucky team, and most recently with Memphis in '08—it would serve as the final corollary to Coach Cal's proof that you can use a system similar to a revolving-door policy of freshman, and you can win it all doing it.

There is every number of reasons why Kentucky should not fail.

They have (arguably) the best player in college basketball in freshman Anthony Davis. They have the most talented starting five in the land. They boast four players averaging double digits in points (and guards Darius Miller and Marquis Teague are fractions off from making it six with their 9.6 and 9.4 averages, respectively).

They play exceptional team defense, something that even the most hardened opposing coaches in the collegiate game grudgingly admit.

During their 24-game streak, they won their games by 16.9 points. By all accounts, they should be untouchable.

But this is March, renowned for being anything but normal. Otherwise, why would a mid-major school from Indiana, most famous for its gym hosting the final in Hoosiers, have crashed the NCAA final for the past two seasons running?

Butler won through sheer grit and determination. With the help of a couple star performers (Gordon Hayward and Shelvin Mack), they nearly accomplished the improbable twice. Could a team like that take down Kentucky in the coming weeks?

We already saw Vanderbilt do it in the SEC tournament final, winning because it accomplished several exceedingly difficult, but altogether possible, parts of their game plan.

Here are five reasons why Kentucky will see its 2012 tournament, just as has happened each season under Calipari, come up short once again.

Talented Freshmen Don't Guarantee a Title

They say that those who remain ignorant of the past are doomed to repeat it.

Yet, no matter how many times Calipari comes up short with his vaunted bunches of freshmen, riper than a fresh batch of grapes plucked from the French riviera, he keeps going back to the well.

Stubbornness? Perhaps—but you can't deny the man has had some superb success as well.

Sports Illustrated's Michael Rosenberg attested as much in a recent Sports Illustrated article, offering some fascinating statistical analysis.

For example: "In three years in Lexington, [Calipari] has handed 54 percent of his starting assignments to freshmen—and won 88 percent of his games."

That's all well and good, and there's no denying that Calipari may well be a genius for the manner in which he has shaped Kentucky into a one-and-done haven for the cream of each year's high school crop on the way to the pros.

He is the high school horse whisperer.

But no matter how many wins are slotted into that "88 percent," the fact remains that Calipari has failed to win the only game that matters—especially where Kentucky, a school that boasts seven national titles, second only to UCLA (11) on the all-time list, is concerned.

It is true that Calipari's teams have been in the discussion for the national title in nearly every season since Derrick Rose-led Memphis was one Mario Chalmers last-gasp shot away from glory in '08.

John Wall's freshman class reached the Elite Eight in 2010, Calipari's first season in Lexington. Last season, Brandon Knight helped lead the next wave to the Final Four, where they came up short to eventual champion UConn.

But no dice. Each of those times, Kentucky ran into hardened teams laden with upperclassmen (West Virginia and Connecticut), who pushed and prodded their way past the Wildcats. Experience counts extra in March.

Kentucky had more overall talent, but they failed to put away both those teams.

No matter how staunchly Calipari defends his program building policy, the fact remains that teams with upperclassmen have been proven to win in March.

The best player on each of the past five title teams: Kemba Walker for UConn (2011), Kyle Singer for Duke (2010), Tyler Hansbrough for North Carolina (2009), Mario Chalmers for Kansas (2008) and Joakim Noah (2007) was either a junior (Walker, Singler, and Chalmers) or a senior (Hansbrough and Noah).

One need not look any further than the Fab Five's failed attempt at a title their freshman year (1991-92) for further evidence that youth isn't always refreshing in March.

That team brushed aside a middling 19-9 regular season to win five straight on their way to the title game, where they were promptly stomped out by Duke (which boasted several talented juniors and seniors in Bobby Hurley and Christian Laettner), 71-51.

Foul Trouble Could Undo Their Chances

His athleticism belongs in another realm, and his timing is impeccable.

His 4.6 blocks per game (he reached eight in a game twice this season), joined with his double-double averages in points and rebounding (14.3 and 10.0 respectively), would make even the most experienced analyst choke on his breakfast croissant and spit out his coffee in disbelief.

Those are averages that belong in an NBA 2K season, not real life.

However, Anthony Davis has done just that for Kentucky in 2011-12, propelling himself into the discussion for National Player of the Year, a distinction that Sporting News has already bestowed upon him.

When Davis is on the court, there's little reason to doubt that Kentucky can go all the way. This is a guy, after all, who broke the school single-season record for blocks with 12 games to go.

But when he's not? Take the Wildcats' first loss on the season—against Indiana on Dec. 10—as a prime example for Davis's importance to this team.

In that 73-72 defeat in Bloomington, Davis was plagued by foul trouble (he ended up with four), and slumped to six points on just four total shots in 24 minutes.

Christian Watford's heroics aside, Kentucky was undone by a resilient team in a hostile environment.

Should they meet another West Virginia or Uconn in this season's NCAA tourney (the teams they bowed out to in the 2010 and '11 tournaments, respectively) that can attack Davis and make him pick up more fouls than blocks (that ratio in the Indiana game was 4:3), an upset will be in the offing.

ESPN contributor Myron Medcalf thinks along those lines. With Davis, Kentucky should win it all.

Without him? Well, you get the picture (and no, not the one used in this slide).

Even in the Wildcats' 73-72 win (funny how final game totals work out sometimes—see: the final score in the Indiana game reversed) over North Carolina exactly one week prior to the trip to Bloomington, it was a Davis block in the final seconds that sealed the victory.

If Davis is on the bench, can another player step up and do the same in the heat of the final seconds?

This is March, after all. Throw the rules out. Any algorithm that predicts Kentucky as the odds-on favorite to win should be reconsidered.

Do as Alabama Did, and Swarm Anthony Davis

"Especially at the start, we weren't able to play through the physical play," [John] Calipari said. "Until we learn to do that, every team's going to play us that way."

Calipari was speaking after Kentucky's hard-fought battle with Alabama in Lexington on Jan. 21, a game the Wildcats had eked out 77-71 in the final minute after withstanding a furious charge by the Crimson Tide.

"We came into the game and we knew we had to be physical and hit them because they're athletic and long in the front court," Alabama's JaMychal Green said. "Our focus mainly was hitting them, being physical and rebounding."

"That's one of the more physical games I've played. It's going to get worse. I've just got to fight through it," said Davis, (who finished 2 of 10 from the field and 7 of 9 from the free-throw line for 11 points). "There's going to be other teams just like that. There's not going to be any games off. They're all going to be games where we have to come out and be physical."

Kentucky hit their free throws in that game (including a sensational streak of 23 of 29 in the second half), but the fact remains; even though they did their job and made the Crimson Tide pay for fouling, they very nearly came undone to a team that no one is really taking seriously as a player in March.

ESPN analyst Doug Gottlieb offered a succinct explanation during a Monday SportsCenter segment for how Vanderbilt took out Kentucky in the SEC title game.

The Commodores attacked his body with wave after wave just like the Crimson Tide, negating his shot-clocking ability (he still ended up with three against Vandy, but that's much more manageable than eight).

Gottlieb reasoned that if other teams can do as Vandy did, Kentucky is beatable.

Kentucky very nearly lost on the road to Vanderbilt late in the SEC season. Had the team not fended off the Commodores down the stretch (they trailed 63-61 with as little as 4:08 remaining), Vanderbilt might well have had two victories against this season's unanimous No. 1 to their name.

Counter Kentucky's Athleticism with Athleticism and Grit

Calipari hailed Kentucky's 73-72 home win against North Carolina on Dec. 3 as a game that "is supposed to be in March."

If not for a last-gasp Anthony Davis shot block on John Henson, Kentucky very likely loses that game.

North Carolina didn't need to worry too much about the way in which they dropped that game, however. They were playing quite possibly the best team in recent memory on the road, and they very nearly won.

Now it's three months later, and the Tar Heels are healthy and hell-bent on revenge.

UNC stayed neck and neck with the Wildcats in nearly every statistical category in that previous match up.

They were minus-3 in rebounding (33-36) and minus-1 in blocked shots (six-seven), but had eight more assists than the Wildcats (17 to nine). Then again, it helps having Kendall Marshall for the last category. (He had eight).

There are few teams outside the Tar Heels who have the requisite front-court athleticism to counter Kentucky, and thereby, defer Anthony Randolph's power.

In Tyler Zeller, John Henson and Harrison Barnes, not to mention burgeoning back up James McAdoo, North Carolina can—and showed they could during that narrow loss—hang with Kentucky's own all-world lineup of Davis, Michael Kidd-Gilchrist and Terrence Jones.

Should these two teams meet again in March, only Henson wrong-foots Davis on a last-second shot this time around, it could well be North Carolina's lighter hue of blue that gets the glory (the two teams wouldn't meet until the final) at Kentucky's (royal) expense.

Negate Kentucky's Talented Trio of Guards

Against North Carolina, Kentucky's guard triumvirate of Doron Lamb, Darius Miller, and frosh Marquis Teague accounted for 33 points on 13 of 31 shooting.

In the second loss of the season, against Vanderbilt on Sunday, those three shot nine of 35.

Lamb (averaging 13.2 points and shooting 46 percent from the field, 45.7 percent from three), Miller (9.6 points on 46 percent shooting), and Teague (9.4 points on "just" 40 percent shooting), are just as integral to the Wildcats' success as the heavily-hyped front court.

In fact, as was seen in those two afore-mentioned games, when they struggle, so do the 'Cats.

After previous Kentucky teams saw point guards John Wall and Brandon Knight receive the most accolades, Kentucky's guards are in a somewhat less-hyped role this season in relation to the ballyhooed front court.

Yet when they don't show up, Kentucky finds itself in trouble.

Against Indiana, the three guards committed six turnovers between them, with the most glaring of the bunch the error-prone Teague, who had three.

ESPN's Myron Medcalf, while admitting he is picking the Wildcats to win it all, said that one of the ways Kentucky could be denied their first title since 1998 would be through a poor Teague performance at the point.

If the freshman cannot take care of the ball while running Kentucky's dribble-drive offense (he's had 19 games with three or more turnovers this season), Kentucky could be in big trouble.

Miller and Lamb are renowned as excellent spot-up shooters, but if they are harassed and forced to put the ball on the floor, their effectiveness can be mitigated.

A team like Carolina, which boasts both a top-notch front court and excellent guards (the return of P.J. Hairston to the fold could not have come at a better time), can meet Kentucky head on in both departments.

And deny them the chance at a title.

For your printable bracket for the 2012 NCAA tournament, click here