As he previewed 1-4 Kentucky’s matchup with UCL, uhm, North Carolina in Saturday’s CBS Sports Classic, John Calipari made a salient point.
“We’ve gotta have a breakthrough at some point,” Calipari observed in a Thursday video news conference.
When Cal’s struggling Cats face Roy Williams and the No. 22 Tar Heels (4-2) on Saturday at 2 p.m. at Cleveland’s Rocket Mortgage FieldHouse, the zany and the unusual may be front and center.
In a statistical tick I don’t think I’ve ever seen before in a matchup of the caliber that features two of the iconic brands in men’s NCAA college basketball history, almost every key player for UK and UNC enters Saturday’s game without a positive assists to turnovers ratio.
Of North Carolina’s top eight players, only freshman guard RJ Davis has more assists (17) than turnovers (14).
Of Kentucky’s top eight players, only graduate transfer guard Davion Mintz (15 assists, nine turnovers) and freshman substitute forward Cam’Ron Fletcher (three assists, two miscues) are plus for the season on assists vs. turnovers.
That just seems unimaginable for Kentucky vs. North Carolina.
Of course, until Wednesday, the seventh renewal of the CBS Sports Classic doubleheader was supposed to feature Kentucky vs. UCLA and North Carolina against Ohio State.
In an “only in 2020” act, those matchups were flipped at the proverbial last minute, reportedly because the inter-conference COVID-19 protocols were more compatible between the SEC (UK) and ACC (UNC) and between the Big Ten (OSU) and the Pac-12 (UCLA).
Making Saturday’s proceedings even more surreal, the game is teetering on the brink of “must-win” for Kentucky. The Cats would be well-served in feeling peak urgency both for North Carolina and the following week’s intrastate Armageddon with No. 23 Louisville at the KFC Yum Center.
In a normal year, NCAA Tournament inclusion is a foregone conclusion for regal UK.
There’s been nothing normal, of course, about this year.
Kentucky has started 1-4 with a home-court loss to a good Atlantic 10 team in Richmond and two defeats against ACC teams, Georgia Tech (2-3) and Notre Dame (2-3), thought to be highly pedestrian.
If Kentucky doesn’t beat Carolina and U of L, it will enter SEC play without any margin of error in terms of compiling an NCAA Tournament-worthy resume.
What makes that tricky is the SEC is getting all but no national respect. In this week’s Associated Press Top 25 poll, Tennessee (2-0) at No. 10 and Missouri (5-0) at No. 16 are the only two Southeastern Conference teams ranked.
So in league play, Kentucky will have little chance to compile narrative-altering victories.
Yet for a roster as green as UK’s — remember, until the injured Keion Brooks returns, Kentucky has no player who had ever scored a basket in a game for the Wildcats before this season — almost all SEC road contests will be treacherous.
That’s why beating North Carolina and Louisville — as well as Texas on Jan. 30 in the SEC/Big 12 Challenge — now looms so large.
A season ago, Williams and the Tar Heels endured an uncharacteristic 14-19 slog.
This year, with losses against the two best teams it has played, 69-67 to Texas in the finals of the Maui Invitational in Asheville, N.C., (more 2020) and 93-80 at No. 3 Iowa, UNC does not yet appear to have fully returned to its normal eminence.
With five players 6-foot-8 or taller among its top eight, including four who are at least 6-10, North Carolina has been mauling opponents on the boards. UNC’s average rebounding margin through six games is a ridiculous plus-15.5.
For a UK roster filled with sleek, slender bodies, keeping the bulkier Heels off the glass will be job one.
“We’re going to have to fight, go body-to-body, stick your nose in,” Calipari said of the approach Kentucky must take to rebounding.
Interestingly, North Carolina is a combined 4-0 against UCLA and Ohio State in the CBS Sports Classic — but 0-2 vs. UK.
Two years ago, a 2018-19 UK season that had gotten off to sluggish start — lowlighted by the season-opening 118-84 annihilation Duke applied to Kentucky in the Champions Classic — turned around with an Ashton Hagans-led 80-72 upset of the Tar Heels in the CBS Sports Classic.
UK rode the momentum of that victory to a road win at Louisville one week later.
The ‘18-19 Cats went on to win 30 games (30-7) and finish an overtime loss to Auburn short of the Final Four.
Now, the schedule switcheroo that removed UCLA and added North Carolina on the Wildcats’ slate provides the current Cats a shot to navigate that exact same route — through UNC and at U of L — to righting their season.
Kentucky basketball playing (near) must-win games in December. Can it get any more 2020 that that?
