How far is Kentucky basketball away from its next national championship?
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The Magic of Madness
The 2020-21 men’s basketball season did not go Kentucky’s way, but the Wildcats have delighted Kentuckians with peak postseason performances for decades. As the Final Four plays out this weekend in Indianapolis, the Herald-Leader has produced a 20-page, full-color commemorative special section inside Sunday’s newspaper celebrating Kentucky’s most memorable moments in the NCAA Tournament. Click below to read the stories from that section in digital form.
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This lost, sinking feeling that hovered around a most unorthodox Kentucky basketball season will turn to one of hope soon enough. That’s what offseasons in Lexington typically bring.
There will be new players coming to town — hot-shot recruits and talented transfers — along with some holdovers who fans will look to for improved play and brighter futures.
How much optimism should there be this time around? And just how bright does UK’s basketball future really look?
There shouldn’t be any more seasons like this one, but real challenges await. And a notable anniversary looms.
This time next year will mark 10 years since Kentucky won its last national championship, its only title in 12 seasons (so far) under Coach John Calipari. It will also mark seven years since the Cats’ last trip to the Final Four.
The greatness UK enjoyed at the beginning of the Calipari era — four Final Fours and an NCAA title in the first six years, along with a star-studded initial roster that revitalized the program — was unsustainable over the long haul. But surely no one paying attention then foresaw the current run of Final Four-less seasons. And few UK fans probably figured that — as long as Calipari was still around — the 2012 national title banner would be the most recent of its kind in Rupp Arena.
But, that’s indeed the state of Kentucky basketball heading into this offseason.
“Unacceptable” was the word that Calipari used several times on his final radio show of the season last month, just a few days after the Cats ended a 9-16 season with a thud, eliminated in the first round of the Southeastern Conference Tournament.
Calipari has had plenty of March success since that last Final Four run, sure. Nine NCAA Tournament wins in the four seasons that followed, including two near-victories in the Elite Eight and a canceled 2020 tournament that Kentucky would have entered with high expectations.
But Calipari knows as well as anyone that success at UK is measured in banners hanging above the Rupp Arena court. So, when will the next one go up?
A return to normal for UK?
The 2021-22 roster is still being finalized, and Kentucky fans will probably have to wait through recruiting and transfer decisions over the next few weeks to get the full picture for next season.
Based on what we think we know at the moment, Kentucky should once again be ranked in the Top 25 to start the season — likely in the 10-20 range — and such expectations would put the Cats as a 3-5 seed for next year’s NCAA Tournament.
Obviously, a lot can happen during the offseason and once the games start next winter.
If some of these returning UK players take the next step in their development — and/or an incoming recruit like Daimion Collins proves to be even better than advertised — the ceiling is high for what should be another talented group of Wildcats.
If the mix of new and returning players fails to jell quickly — as has happened with a few Calipari teams before this past COVID-19 season — there will be growing pains early and ground to be made up in March.
Advancing to the Final Four is obviously no easy feat, and the Calipari teams that have made it that far have had either elite players built for March runs or several super-talented players on the same roster. Or, in a couple of cases, both.
It’s unclear if UK’s 2021-22 squad will check either of those boxes. The next group of Cats could be good enough to put themselves in the Final Four conversation come next March, but such a run is far from a sure thing.
Future of Kentucky recruiting
Recent history tells us that March success is now most common for teams that can find a blend of experience and, obviously, elite talent, whether that be from star recruits or veteran players who blossom over time. Teams dominated by freshmen simply don’t have the magic they did just a few years ago, especially with more of the very top players opting for the professional path or scattered across several schools.
Seemingly, what UK’s program needs is a mix of returning players with success and experience playing under Calipari to go along with a few star recruits and/or talented transfers. The 2022 class — and the continued evolution of the NCAA transfer portal — should provide a major opportunity for the Cats, if they’re able to keep some continuity within the program.
Not all recruiting classes feature the same abundance of talent at the top levels, but this 2022 group is typically seen as one of the better classes in recent years. That depth of talent could be a boon for UK, but it could also mean more competition from the G League and other professional routes, which are already being discussed as realistic options for some of the best players in the class, including early Kentucky targets like Jalen Duren and Keyonte George.
Whatever happens in the 2022 recruiting cycle, the key to UK’s future success likely hinges on getting guys to stick around. To build the proper foundation for the program — and to ensure a better chance of deeper runs in March — Calipari simply needs guys to come back for multiple seasons. He’ll need players like Devin Askew, Dontaie Allen and Lance Ware to stay for three or four seasons, guys like incoming recruits Nolan Hickman and Bryce Hopkins to both contribute immediately and develop into veterans over time.
The roster pieces are in place for Calipari to develop such a foundation over the next couple of years. And the 2023 class is the group that could make things mighty interesting.
That class features star point guard DJ Wagner — the son of former Calipari star Dajuan Wagner and grandson of former Calipari assistant Milt Wagner — in the No. 1 overall spot. Now just a sophomore, Wagner is already being discussed as a possible straight-to-the-pros recruit, but his family’s ties with Calipari run deep, and there seems to be a good chance he’d actually play a year of college ball — presumably at Kentucky — especially if the NCAA can figure out its name, image and likeness rules by the time he’d be getting to campus.
Wagner is exactly the type of elite-of-the-elite recruit that Calipari simply hasn’t had in recent years. If UK can add him and some other potential stars in the 2022 and ’23 classes — Reed Sheppard is in that 2023 class, don’t forget — to a returning group of experienced players, that 2023-24 season could rekindle memories of the earliest days of the Calipari era.
By that time, Calipari would be in his 15th season at Kentucky. It would also be the final season before a clause in his contract kicks in that says Calipari can step down as head coach and remain with UK in an ambassador role (for a salary of $1 million per year).
Calipari would be 65 years old by then. Under this ideal scenario, he would have restored some continuity to the program and just finished coaching the son of one of his greatest players and recruits — possibly to a Final Four or national title? — before that player moves on to the NBA Draft.
There will be a lot to play out over the next couple of seasons, and there will surely be an opportunity for Calipari to return Kentucky to March greatness in that time.
Those who follow UK’s recruiting efforts will have an eye on that 2023 class, however, and with it the final season of a three-year stretch that should tell us a lot about the future of Kentucky basketball.
This story was originally published April 4, 2021 at 5:24 AM.
