March Madness 2010: Teams Built To Beat The Kentucky Wildcats

Youth is wasted on the young.

And so are 40-inch verticals, freakishly explosive crossovers, and $3,000 rims on a Chevy Corsica.

In college basketball, the saying holds true unless you’re the Fab 5, Carmelo Anthony, or never nervous Pervis Ellison.

Lately, youth doesn’t seem to be much of concern if you’re coached by the maestro of freshmen superstardom, John Calipari.

Coach Cal, for all of the grief he gets on the NCAA infractions front, is a helluva basketball coach.

Coach Calipari’s ability to X and O on both ends of the floor is grossly underrated.

His teams brimming with potential prima donnas guard like a Ben Howland-coached team. Lou Roe, Marcus Camby, and the UMASS Minutemen hung their hat on great defensive play, as did Coach Cal’s Memphis teams.

This Kentucky Wildcat squad is no different.

On offense, Calipari recognized genius in an offense which is called Dribble Drive Motion , run by an obscure junior college coach from Fresno, CA.

Coach Cal took the DDM, tweaked it, and used it with his superstars, turning it into a national championship worthy offense that’s all the rage in college basketball today. With a few more practice free throws, he’s likely hanging a banner.

But more than X’s and O’s, Calipari is a master psychologist.

Consider what he’s done with young teams at Memphis led by freshmen point guards Derrick Rose and Tyreke Evans, and now a virtuoso performance in his first year at Kentucky with the mercurial John Wall behind the wheel.

The results he’s had at UK this year are astounding.

When you take a collection of All-American Freshmen, two one and done NBA lottery picks, as well as junior forward Patrick Patterson who happens to also be playing for a paycheck and you get them to buy into a team concept, you’re doing something right.

It’s even more impressive when you take the same collection of loosely-affiliated superstars with separate agendas and get them to go 27-2.

Cal has gotten kids like Wall and Cousins to play unselfish basketball—for most of the year anyway—and that’s an accomplishment I’m not sure most coaches coaching today could accomplish.

All of that considered, let’s start with Kentucky’s strengths.

Strengths

You won’t find a more talented club anywhere in America. One through five, the Wildcats are as explosive and athletic a basketball team as there has been this decade.

John Wall is the lead guard and he’s likely going to be the No. 1 pick in the draft. He does things with the dribble that would make Kenny Anderson blush. He also happens to be a plus shooter with an embarrassment of athletic riches: 40-inch vertical, explosive quickness, and speed.

Inside, Demarcus Cousins is probably the toughest player in the country to matchup with. There isn’t one single post defender in college basketball today that can handle his size and strength one-on-one without at least some help.

Cousins is a surefire lottery pick as well.

If this inside/outside combination weren’t enough already, consider the fact that Kentucky’s supporting cast would start for 99 percent of the teams in college basketball. Hell, Eric Bledsoe and Patrick Patterson would be No. 1 options on virtually every team out there.

Bledsoe is a hot shooting, lightning quick combo guard who gives UK a second creator/playmaker opposite Wall.

Junior Patrick Patterson is a seasoned post scorer who’s added a 3-ball to his quiver. With an improved face-up game, Patterson can complement Demarcus Cousins from the high post or from the arc in a four out look if UK really wants to isolate Cousins on the block.

Point blank, the Cats are filthy.

Weaknesses

The main weakness that should be worrying the Wildcats is youth or inexperience as it relates to the Big Dance. It’s already cost UK a game against undermanned South Carolina, and made other games against overmatched opponents closer than they needed to be.

Against South Carolina, the Wildcats could have won the ballgame if it weren’t for a few ill-advised shots from Wall and Bledsoe early in the shot clock down the stretch.

In that game, the Wildcats would have been better served going to Cousins 50 times than hoisting a single perimeter shot. Cousins was that dominant, and a more experienced backcourt would have recognized that fact.

The other weakness the Wildcats have is they lack a consistent perimeter shooting game.

Wall is streaky; Bledsoe sometimes has trouble finding his rhythm playing second fiddle to Wall; and Patrick Patterson is a four man that isn’t entirely comfortable playing around the arc.

Finding a consistent long range shooter against sagging man-to-man or zones that will be prevalent in the tournament is a must for UK.

The zone busting answer may be Darius Miller, a player who seems to be taking to the role of designated sniper off the bench. His 3 threes against Florida on Sunday probably saved the day for the Cats and his range will come in handy in the tournament.

How to beat Kentucky

Any strategy formulated to upset the Wildcats starts with their weaknesses: inexperience and shooting.

Most of what an opponent does should be predicated on taking away the easy, intuitive things that Kentucky likes to do on offense.

Take away dunks and foul shots by taking away Cousins and transition buckets.

Make the Wildcats run offense, make decisions, and make extra passes. As the game tightens, Wall may become impatient and impetuous.

If you can’t limit dunks and foul shots by limiting Cousins and transition, you’re done anyway.

Your guards must value the basketball and your team has to take good shots to limit transition offense.

On defense, you have to use zone, some junk (triangle and two on Wall/Bledsoe), or at least a quick double in the post on Cousins to limit interior offense.

You build your gameplan off these two musts.

If you can limit Cousins and transition, then step two includes trying to confuse the Kentucky guards by mixing defenses from possession to possession.

Play some zone, then switch to man, mix in some token pressure and halfcourt trap—whatever it takes to get Wall and Bledsoe out of kilter and out of their comfort zone. Switch defenses during a possession if your team is experienced enough.

On a micro level, one way to get Wall and Bledsoe to play uncomfortably is to entice midrange jumpers from the UK backcourt because these types of shots are much less effective than rhythm 3’s, dunks, and entry passes to Cousins.

It’s a good way to manufacture empty possessions. Duke did this to UNLV in the 1991 upset by enticing George Ackles to shoot open 15 footers.

Given all that, teams that are anything worse than 3 or 4 seeds have only a shooter’s chance to beat this talented Kentucky group, meaning these lower-seeded teams will have to be on fire from long range.

Lower-Seeded Teams Built to Pull off the Gameplan

Siena

One team that is built to pull off the huge upset in the second round would be the Siena Saints, likely to seeded as an eight or a nine.

They’re a very experienced team led by pass-first senior point guard Ronald Moore, senior wing Edwin Ubiles, as well as senior forward, the team’s leading scorer, and MAAC conference player of the year, Alex Franklin.

The other two starting spots are filled by junior forward Clarence Jackson and junior post Ryan Rossister.

Siena is an experienced team full of upperclassmen, and they’re talented.

Four of the five starters average double digits, while lead guard Ronald Moore averages seven points per game and an astounding eight assists to just two turnovers.

Additionally, Saints are as athletic as most teams in America, but more importantly, their experience means that they are extremely comfortable in their own skin.

They know their roles and play good team basketball as a result.

Siena also plays multiple defenses well, from traditional 2-3 zone, to 1-3-1 three quarter court trap, to man to man. They can confuse a young backcourt even if it’s as talented as UK’s.

Texas A&M Aggies

If I’m Kentucky, I wouldn’t want any part of the five seeded Aggies in a Sweet 16 matchup.

Mark Turgeon is a master defensive gameplanner and he’d have a week to prepare and devise a defensive Rubik’s Cube for young Wall and Bledsoe to toil against.

The Aggies also have a pretty experienced team overall, led by an athletic guard in Donald Sloan who can bother Wall on the perimeter. Inside, Texas A&M isn’t afraid to play physical and they’re quite adept at frustrating opposing bigs.

If I’m a Kentucky fan, I want to face teams that are willing to get into shootouts with a propensity to give up easy offense. The last thing I want is for my young team to have to make multiple decisions to find the correct player in the correct spot in a halfcourt possession game. Eighteen and 19-year-old kids getting ready to receive $50 million  bank wires are quirky like that.

After all patience is a virtue and it doesn’t seem virtue has ever been a hallmark of the Calipari organization.

Up next, the Duke Blue Devils.

This article originally appeared on March To March

Follow Kevin Berger on Twitter: @MarchToMarch