Keep an Eye on Arizona; Kentucky's Not the Only Team with a Shot at 40-0

While the entire world talks about Kentucky's quest for 40-0, there's another Wildcats team that at least has a snowball's chance in Arizona of running the table, too.

There are still nine undefeated teams across the country, but let's go ahead and rule seven of them out.

Duke, Louisville and Virginia are outstanding teams, but there's no way anyone is going 18-0 through that ACC gauntlet. Likewise, Villanova is bound to lose at least one game in a Big East conference that is drastically better than last season. TCU won't last a week into its Big 12 schedule before suffering a loss. Washington is going to lose as soon as it runs into a team with a competent big man that can handle Robert Upshaw.

Colorado State is the wild card, because the Rams undeniably have the easiest remaining schedule of the undefeateds. However, we can't take them too seriously until they win a game against San Diego State.

That leaves the Arizona Wildcats and the Kentucky Wildcats as our top candidates for perfection.

Since late April, I've been championing Kentucky as a potential 40-0 team. KenPom.com (subscription required) gives Kentucky a 6.2 percent chance of finishing the regular season without a loss—though, that doesn't include the SEC tournament or NCAA tournament. Factor those nine games in and it likely drops to less than one percent.

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Regardless of what the math suggests, Kentucky is phenomenal. Even with Alex Poythress out for the rest of the year, these Wildcats remain very deep and talented. Karl-Anthony Towns, Willie Cauley-Stein and Dakari Johnson will each get serious consideration for National Player of the Year, and there's no good reason the Harrison twins won't also get some votes.

Simply put, there's a reason Kentucky has been the unanimous No. 1 team in the Associated Press Top 25 for the past two weeks and there's a reason this is one of the most discussed rosters in college basketball history.

I've done a handful of interviews for sports radio shows already this season. Whether they're calling from California, Kentucky, North Carolina or Texas—I've even done interviews for stations in Canada—it's a foregone conclusion that they're going to want to spend a couple minutes talking about the Kentucky Wildcats.

"Why are they having trouble getting going against drastically inferior teams?"

"Will they maintain the platoon system?"

"Can they go undefeated?"

And so on and so forth.

However, no one ever seems to ask about Arizona.

Even if you Google "Could Arizona go 40-0?" it just returns a bunch of articles about Kentucky.

Maybe it's East Coast analysts' bias. Maybe it's deliberate ignorance. But the Wildcats from the Grand Canyon State are every bit as good as the Wildcats from the Bluegrass State, and it's about time that people start recognizing it.

Remember, it was only five weeks ago that the entire world was torn on whether Arizona or Kentucky would actually be the best team in the country.

The four experts at NBCSports.com were split right down the middle. Two had Arizona winning it all and two had Kentucky winning it all. They differed wildly on their other Final Four teams, but all four had both Arizona and Kentucky reaching the national semifinals.

The six college hoops experts for B/R were also quite split—two picked Arizona to win it all, two picked Kentucky and two picked Wisconsin.

ESPN asked its 22 experts for their Final Four teams and national champions. Arizona was in 20 of the 22 Final Fours including eight picks for national champion. Kentucky was picked as champ nine times, but appeared in "only" 19 of 22 Final Fours.

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Pardon my French, but what the heck happened?

It's almost as if the national media treated Kentucky's 32-point destruction of Kansas as a loss for Arizona.

In a recent exchange between Jay Bilas and Jeff Goodman (ESPN Insider subscription required), ESPN's gurus asked and answered how high Arizona's ceiling is.

Goodman's synopsis: "I like this team a lot, especially from a defensive and toughness standpoint, but I'm just not sold it can win the national title this season."

Bilas' response: "I think Arizona is in the top tier of teams this season, but I still have the Wildcats behind Kentucky, Duke and Wisconsin. After that, I would put Arizona up with Louisville, Villanova and Virginia as the next best teams."

(Um, Jay, do you know how tiers work? You can't say Arizona is in the top tier and then put the Wildcats behind three other teams.)

Arizona is 11-0 with quality wins over Gonzaga, San Diego State, Michigan and Kansas State. The Wildcats have had fewer shots blocked than any other team in the country and currently rank fourth in the nation in defensive rebounding percentage, both according to KenPom.com (subscription required).

Whether Arizona is a legitimate threat to beat Kentucky is a discussion for another day, but the West Coast Wildcats are one of the toughest teams in the country to defeat.

Arizona doesn't allow second-chance opportunities and there's not much of anything you can do to stop its players from putting the ball in the hoop.

T.J. McConnell is the only player on the roster that has attempted at least eight two-point field-goal shots without making at least 55 percent of them. Kaleb Tarczewski is shooting 63.8 percent from the field. Rondae Hollis-Jefferson has made 62.5 percent of his shots from inside the arc. Stanley Johnson and Brandon Ashley are each constantly getting to the rim and shooting 56 percent from two-point range.

Arizona is also one of the top teams in the country when it comes to drawing fouls. The Wildcats don't play at an outrageously fast tempo—they currently rank 60th in the country in that category, according to KenPom.com—but they still rank 10th in free-throw attempts per game.

In a word, they are relentless.

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They aren't a great three-point shooting team and they know it, but they drive to the hoop over and over again, knowing that your only hope of stopping them is to foul.

Michigan will to struggle in the paint against a lot of teams this season, but the Wolverines had no answer last weekend as Arizona made 26-of-38 (68.4 percent) of its two-point field-goal attempts.

Even UC Irvine and 7'6" Mamadou N'Diaye had trouble containing Arizona in the paint, as the Anteaters finished the night with one blocked shot and 24 fouls that led to 34 Arizona free throws.

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As is the case with Kentucky, your best chance of beating Arizona is probably to pack the lane, deny entry passes and simply hope that Stanley Johnson, Gabe York and Elliott Pitts don't make too many uncontested three-pointers.

Also, you'd better make every one of your shots count, because you won't be getting very many of those rebounds back.

Oh, and don't count on scoring more than 68 points, because no team has done that against Arizona yet this season.

Now that we've re-established Arizona as one of the toughest teams in the country to beat, there's the minor issue of the remaining schedule.

On the one hand, there isn't a single game that Arizona is projected to lose, according to KenPom.com. Even mighty Kentucky is given a 51 percent chance of losing to Louisville next weekend.

However, Arizona will play a substantially more difficult conference schedule than Kentucky.

The Wildcats from Lexington are given at least an 81 percent chance of winning each SEC game except for the road game against Florida—where Kentucky still has a 68 percent chance of prevailing. The Wildcats from Tucson are given a 71 or less percent chance of winning seven different Pac-12 games—not to mention this Friday's road game against UTEP.

KenPom gives Arizona a 1.3 percent chance of going undefeated in Pac-12 play, but it gives Kentucky a 14.1 percent chance of going undefeated in SEC play.

By a factor of 10, Kentucky is more likely to go 18-0 in-conference than Arizona, but you have to think things would be a lot different if these Wildcats swapped conferences. It's kind of a funny-but-true point to make, because who would have thought three years ago—when the Pac-12 regular-season champion couldn't even earn an at-large bid—that the Pac-12 would be this much better than the SEC?

Arizona's odds of running the table may be less than one percent, but they're greater than zero percent. That's better than all other non-Kentucky teams can claim.

Eventually, someone has to win the lottery.

Kerry Miller covers college basketball for Bleacher Report. You can follow him on Twitter @kerrancejames.