Top Cats: Ranking all 10 of John Calipari's UK teams
Editor’s note: This is the fourth piece in a series commemorating John Calipari’s dominant decade at Kentucky. Later Thursday: 10 disappointments. Coming Friday: A Q&A with the man who hired Calipari.
A decade into John Calipari’s reign at Kentucky, there’s really no comparison for Cal except … well … Cal. How about stacking up his 10 Kentucky teams not against the rest of the SEC or the NCAA, but against each other? Without further fanfare, here’s the ranking of Coach Cal’s Kentucky squads, including this year’s team, which starts its NCAA Tournament journey tonight.
10. 2012-13 (21-12, lost in first round of NIT)
Honestly, most Kentucky fans would rank this team 11th of the 10 teams, just below getting run over by a car. How bad was Calipari’s worst Kentucky team? After the loss of star center Nerlens Noel at midseason, pretty darn bad. Lowlights included a 30-point loss in Knoxville, a 16-point loss to Vanderbilt in the SEC Tournament, an NIT berth and a loss at Robert Morris in Calipari’s old hometown of Moon Township, Pa. Yuck.
9. 2017-18 (26-11, lost to Kansas State in Sweet 16)
It’s hard to imagine a team that reached the NCAA Sweet 16 earning a spot as the next-to-worst of Coach Cal’s Kentucky teams. But this squad never really gelled. They went 10-8 in the SEC as the team’s top five scorers were all freshmen. Hamidou Diallo particularly struggled through the season, and when Kentucky got some massive breaks in its NCAA bracket (the Cats beat two double-digit seeds to reach the Sweet 16), they still gagged it away against Kansas State.
8. 2015-16 (27-9, lost to Indiana in NCAA Round of 32)
This group had to rely too much on freshmen and never really got untracked. The biggest problem with this team was that Calipari landed 5-star big man Skal Labissiere, and then watched him struggled through a remarkably tentative season in which he averaged 6.6 points per game. Guards Jamal Murray and Tyler Ulis were strong, but without an inside presence, UK lost to IU to finish its season early in the NCAA second round.
7. 2018-19 (26-5, tba)
Obviously, the NCAA Tournament has been the ultimate proving ground for Calipari’s teams, so ranking one before the Tournament means that the results are subject to wild fluctuation — not unlike this team, which could go out in the NCAA’s second round or reach the Final Four. For now, this ranking is a place-holder, but it’s not hard to imagine this team soaring up as high as fourth on this list … and potentially as high as second.
6. 2016-17 (32-6, lost in Elite Eight to North Carolina)
Of the many talented backcourts Kentucky has fielded under Calipari, there might not have been one better than De’Aaron Fox and Malik Monk. The high scoring guards led UK to a 26-5 regular season, won the SEC Tournament, and as a No. 2 seed in the NCAAs, gave top-seed North Carolina a great game before falling on a last-second Luke Maye jump shot. This team feels the most similar to Kentucky’s current squad, and thus could well be leap-frogged with a good NCAA Tournament showing.
5. 2010-11 (29-9, lost in Final Four to UConn)
After the sizzling first season in Lexington, Calipari’s second team was a rebuilding effort — one that included 4 close SEC losses in February. But by NCAA Tournament time, a mixed group including freshmen Brandon Knight and Terrence Jones and veterans DeAndre Liggins and Josh Harrelson meshed together well enough to knock off No. 1 seed Ohio State in the Sweet 16 and get past North Carolina for a Final Four spot — Kentucky’s first since 1998.
4. 2013-14 (29-11, lost in NCAA title game to UConn)
Yes, we have an 11-loss team No. 4. You might notice that the worst team on this list lost 12 games. This freshman-laden squad struggled at times and lost 3 of its final 4 regular season games. But a funny thing happened on their way to an early NCAA exit — Kentucky caught fire in late-game situations, and freshman guard Aaron Harrison shot the Wildcats all the way to the NCAA title game before the team ran out of scoring punch. Late-game heroics against Wichita State, Louisville, Michigan and Wisconsin made Kentucky’s NCAA run one to remember.
3. 2009-10 (35-3, lost in Elite Eight to West Virginia)
Yes, we ranked a team that lost in the Elite Eight ahead of two teams that reached the Final Four. This might have been Calipari’s most important UK team. By retaining Patrick Patterson and a core group of upperclassmen, then adding the best recruiting class in school history (John Wall, DeMarcus Cousins, Eric Bledsoe, etc), Calipari didn’t just make Kentucky good — he made them the go-to school for the top talent in the nation. After a decidedly unfun stretch in the late 2000s, this team made UK basketball fun and glamorous.
2. 2014-15 (38-1, lost in Final Four to Wisconsin)
If there’s a narrative against Calipari, this team is the key. You could argue that since UK’s NCAA semifinal loss to Wisconsin, Duke and Coach K have stolen the role of the nation’s top college hoops program. You could argue that the run of amazing success crested at that moment (with Calipari’s fourth UK Final Four in his first six seasons in Lexington). All of that forgets what a remarkable team this was, with two full five-man groups of NBA talent. Not only were they 38-0 until the Final Four, they demolished UCLA by 39, Kansas by 32, and beat West Virginia by 39 in the Sweet 16. This team was so great that there’s a temptation to give them the top spot, even though the season ended in heartbreak.
1. 2011-12 (38-2, won NCAA Championship)
On some level, this has to be academic. There are times when you could argue that the best team wasn’t the one that won the title. It wasn’t that way in 2012. While Calipari’s 2015 squad does earn some credit for an undefeated regular season and an SEC Tournament title (neither of which the 2012 team can claim), Anthony Davis, Michael Kidd-Gilchrist and Co., led UK to the school’s eighth title, only three years after the team was playing in the NIT.
PREVIOUSLY IN TOP CATS:
How John Calipari revived Kentucky basketball, changed college basketball
