By Ashley Scoby
Special to NKyTribune
The whispers are getting louder.
By the beginning of last season, the undefeated clamor had grown to a deafening din around Kentucky. With the recruiting class that included Aaron and Andrew Harrison, Julius Randle, James Young, Dakari Johnson and Marcus Lee, surely no one could beat the Wildcats.
That din had settled distinctly to whispers by the time Kentucky started to struggle last year. And when the losses started coming, the undefeated talk fizzled out into, “Well, of course no team could go 40-0 in this day and age. But wouldn’t it have been fun?” Kentucky fans and media laughed at how silly they had been, folded up their 40-0 shirts and enjoyed, still, a run to the national title game.
When this season started, no one said the word “undefeated.” It became something akin to cursing in church, and anyone who brought it up was shushed.
“That can’t happen. We found that out last year.”
But suddenly, as Kentucky has entered mid-January still with a ‘0’ on the right side of its record, the opposite is happening. The whispers of 40-0 are getting louder; the word ‘undefeated’ is more acceptable than it was in August and the talk has extended outside Kentucky’s borders. But there are whispers based off the results of a still-improving team, rather than unfounded hopes and expectations.
USA Today ran a story in November titled “Is this the Kentucky team that could go undefeated?” Ex-Wildcat Scott Padgett, now head coach at Samford, said this week that the team was good enough to run the table. SMU coach Larry Brown said the same thing, in November.
Dan Dakich wrote a story for ESPN in December called “Why Kentucky will go undefeated.” Seth Greenberg, another ESPN commentator, has said the same.
Many – like Kara Lawson, the color commentator for Kentucky’s 70-48 win at Alabama on Saturday – have amended their predictions based on Kentucky’s offensive performance. Lawson said several times during Saturday’s game that if Kentucky “hits shots like this” (the Wildcats shot 50 percent against Alabama), then it would be hard to find someone who could beat them.
And really, even for those Kentucky fans allergic to the word ‘undefeated’ thanks to last year’s disappointment, who could blame people for starting to think 40-0 is possible?
The Wildcats have done everything they’re supposed to do this year, and occasionally, then some. They’ve destroyed Kansas on a neutral court, beaten rival Louisville on its home court, wrecked an SEC opponent by 40 points and won its first SEC road game by 22 points.
There have been speed bumps: An overtime win against Mississippi. A double-overtime win against Texas A&M. The struggles have come when Kentucky least expected them, and that certainly creates the possibility of a loss.
But Kentucky just keeps winning. It just keeps holding opponents to less-than-20-point halves, and less-than-40-percent-field-goal shooting performances. It keeps improving from behind the arc after a slow start.
“This is a Kentucky team that’s still improving offensively,” said College GameDay host Jay Williams after the Alabama game. “And that’s scary.”
So, then, this year’s undefeated talk is a different kind. It’s not the preseason hype that loads expectations and pressure onto teenagers’ shoulders.
It’s the kind that builds on itself once the team starts proving it can. It’s the kind of undefeated talk that is based off real results this team is creating, and the possibility for more, rather than the expectation of perfection. It’s the kind that’s built off the team’s own mindset – the has previously prompted Willie Cauley-Stein to say Kentucky is trying to “kill” opponents.
This is a much softer, less clamorous, 40-0 whisper. And it’s surrounding a team that might just validate it all.
Ashley Scoby is a senior journalism major at the University of Kentucky and a KyForward sports writer. She has reported on the Wildcats for wildcathoops.com, vaughtsviews.com andkysportsreport.com as well as for newspapers in Danville and Glasgow. She will begin a summer internship with Sports Illustrated magazine in New York this June.