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State story lines offer promise of compelling year

A season ago, the world turned upside down for college basketball fans in Kentucky.

One team from the commonwealth made the Final Four — but it was not a squad from our state's signature sport, men's hoops.

The Louisville women lost to mighty Connecticut in the national title game.

Three of the commonwealth's men's basketball programs did win games in the 2009 NCAA Tournament — and none of them were the University of Kentucky.

Louisville, Western Kentucky and Morehead State all won in last season's Large Waltz. In what turned out to be the final year of Billy Gillispie's brief coaching reign, UK went to the NIT.

This season almost certainly will be better for Wildcats fans — but it will have to go a ways to be as interesting as last year for the state as a whole.

Here are 10 story lines from college basketball in Kentucky that should give 2009-2010 a chance to be compelling in its own right.

10. UK's Fab Frosh

John Wall, DeMarcus Cousins, Daniel Orton, Eric Bledsoe and Jon Hood are entering college basketball with lavish hype. Can they merge their abilities with UK's returning players? Will they accept roles and sublimate their considerable individual skills into a cohesive whole?

If the answers are yes, the John Calipari era will get off to a roaring start.

9. Replacing an Angel

In an epic career, Angel McCoughtry put Louisville on the radar of women's college basketball and herself in the argument for greatest women's hoops player ever in Kentucky.

Now that she's gone, we'll find out ifU of L has established an elite program or whether its success was built around one special player.

8. A WKU 'three-peat'

Even with its rich men's basketball history, Western Kentucky has never won NCAA Tournament games in three consecutive seasons. This year, Coach Ken McDonald's team can change that.

The challenge for a veteran nucleus that includes homegrown standouts A.J. Slaughter (Shelby County) and Steffphon Pettigrew (Elizabethtown) is thriving without crafty point guard Orlando Mendez-Valdez, who graduated after being named last year's Sun Belt Conference Player of the Year.

7. Can Mitchell make some noise?

When he replaced Mickie DeMoss as UK women's basketball coach three years ago, Matthew Mitchell did not inherit an Angel McCoughtry.

Still, the immense success of Louisville Coach Jeff Walz — who was hired at the same time as Mitchell (and did inherit McCoughtry) — puts pressure on the third-year Kentucky head man to start making some noise of his own.

6. A Murray restoration?

They are used to making men's NCAA Tournament trips at Murray State. The perennial OVC power has gone dancing 11 times since 1988. But under current Racers Coach Billy Kennedy, MSU has had a bad case of the "seconds."

Murray has finished as runner-up in the Ohio Valley Conference regular-season race in all three of Kennedy's seasons, and has yet to earn an NCAA trip by winning the league tournament.

This year, Murray State fans expect a deep, veteran and balanced team led by forward Danero Thomas to get the Racers back into March Madness.

5. Morehead vs. expectations

Last season was magic for Morehead State men's basketball. Donnie Tyndall's program won 20 games for only the third time in school history. MSU made the NCAA tourney for the first time since 1984 and won a contest (over Alabama State in the play-in game) in the Big Dance.

With four of five starters back, including rapidly developing big man Kenneth Faried, Morehead faces a new challenge: A season as the hunted, not the hunter.

4. Forward hole for Louisville?

A year ago, pretty much everything Louisville did ran through star forwards Terrence Williams and Earl Clark. The multi-skilled forwards are now both in the play-for-pay, having been first-round NBA Draft picks.

The team left behind at U of L has a bevy of capable guards, two developing sophomore big men and — not one proven forward.

Does Rick Pitino go twin towers and three guards? Or does somebody (Jared Swopshire?) emerge on the Cardinals' roster who can actually play forward?

3. Scandal aftershocks

Do the various basketball coaching scandals that filled our state's summer have a carry-over into the season?

In the aftermath of the extortion case/sex scandal that engulfed Rick Pitino, how brutal will road crowds be on the U of L coach? Does Pitino, a proud man of significant accomplishment, have the make-up to survive being the butt of the joke?

Can Memphis win its appeal before the NCAA and get its 2008 Final Four appearance off the vacated list? In terms of national perception, Memphis prevailing would actually mean more to the reputation of the ex-Tigers coach, John Calipari, than the current Memphis program.

Stay tuned.

2. Patterson dancing with the stars

When he surprised many by spurning Duke and Florida to sign with then-new Kentucky Coach Billy Gillispie, my wish for Patrick Patterson was that he would get to play on at least one "good by Kentucky standards" team before he left Lexington.

For the classy junior from West Virginia, this figures to be that team. Barring injury, it seems certain that Patterson will at least finally get to play in an NCAA Tournament game for the first time.

1. The Calipari restoration

The new Kentucky coach spent a good bit of the summer trying to lower runaway expectations for his first team. Actually, Calipari needn't have bothered.

My sense of the Kingdom of the Blue is that it is so grateful to have the buzz back around UK basketball that this first season of the Calipari era is a bit of a freebie for the coach.

It is next year when the expectations set in — that is, assuming there is no Final Four trip now.

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