NCAA Basketball Kentucky Wildcats

Kentucky Basketball: Consistency Is Top Item On Wildcats’ 2014 Christmas List

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When virtually every player on your team is a top flight McDonald’s All American, the weekly scrimmages you run in practice are more often tougher than the actual games you have to play in. And this is exactly the scenario the 2014 Kentucky Wildcats face every time they take the court. When you have proven veterans like the Harrison twins and Willie Cauley-Stein, all of whom have been to the NCAA championship game, going up against freshmen who were the top recruits in the country like Karl-Anthony Towns and Trey Lyles in practice every day, you can’t help but know that your team is loaded with freakishly good talent.

So being exposed to this and all of the hype that the national media and the local fans pour upon the players on almost a daily basis will naturally lead to the getting a big head and a bit complacent at times. They almost feel as though they can beat every team they face by simply showing up to the gym, but just like last year’s team had to eventually learn, you cannot underestimate your opponents in this time of parity in the NCAA. It seems, however, that this year’s team has yet to figure that out.

They are suffering from the same complacency issues that Florida State‘s football team is going through right now. They are also a team that is loaded with young talent that has just come off of a championship season, and they are clearly underestimating their opponents, only putting their foot on the gas when they need to in order to pull out a win.

You can see this in Kentucky when they play teams like Buffalo or Columbia. They actually found themselves trailing to both teams at halftime, and I wasn’t even aware that Columbia had a basketball team until they played one another a week ago. They obviously came into these matchups not as focused as they needed to be but eventually woke up and stepped on the gas to pull out easy wins in the second half. But if you look at how they perform against top notch talent like the Kansas Jayhawks, Texas Longhorns and the North Carolina Tar Heels, you see what this ultra-talented team can do.

The problem with playing down to your opponent is that it can come up to bite you when are in the middle of the season’s grind and facing a team like the Ole Miss Rebels or Auburn Tigers. If you go into those matchups lethargic, you can walk out of those gyms with a loss, as their game against you is basically their national championship. And the last thing you want is to have your seeding affected by a couple of nonsensical losses.

The bigger issue, however, will come in Round 2 or Round 3 of the tournament when facing a team that may not be that big of a big name but has one or two veteran players on their squad who can get hot and stay that way to force an early exit for John Calipari’s crew. So if I were Calipari or the fans of Kentucky, I would be asking Santa to drop off a bag of fire for this Wildcat team, because that is exactly what they need to bring to each and every game they play in this season. And if they do that, you could be witnessing something historical this year.

Kelly Anderson is a blogger for www.RantSports.com. Follow him on Twitter @bgipp01 or add him to your network on Google.

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