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John Calipari's Cats a month away from history


Welcome to March, where Cinderellas are born, miracles come true and Duke loses early, sending countless brackets into disarray.

This month, though, we sports fans have the chance to witness something truly spectacular. No. 1 Kentucky is currently 29-0 with no truly difficult games left on its regular season schedule.

With the NCAA tournament looming, coach John Calipari's Wildcats have a very, very good chance at running the table and going undefeated, something that has not happened since 1976.

In all sports, undefeated seasons are things of history. With the exception of college football and women's NCAA basketball, perfect seasons are exceptionally rare.

Due to the length of their seasons it is next to certain we will never see an undefeated NBA or MLB team.

We've seen an undefeated regular season in the NFL in recent years but with an extended regular season, time will tell if a perfect run to a title will ever occur again.

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And so whether you hate the Wildcats or love them, the opportunity they have this month is one you should pay attention to. It may not happen again for a long, long time.

Much has been made of Calipari's recruiting style. The slick titan routinely takes advantage of the NCAA's one-and-done rule, which seems continually mired in controversy.

Rather than avoid the rule out of some moral high ground, Calipari embraces it and his stars often burn bright for a short time and move on. But, the skilled recruiter that he is, Calipari routinely has his next crop of freshman phenoms waiting.

This season's team is actually one of the older ones Calipari has coached and yet it is still one of the 10 youngest teams in Division I.

Kentucky is known for its stars like Karl-Anthony Towns and Willie Cauley-Stein, but what makes this team special is its depth.

Although the SEC is nothing to write home about as far as college basketball is concerned, you could take Kentucky's second unit and it would be a conference contender, which is really saying something.

March Madness will soon take full effect as Selection Sunday takes place on the 15th.

The championship game will take place a little less than a month later on April 6, curiously not in the titular month of March.

Between now and then, Kentucky has a legitimate chance to go down as one of the sport's best teams in the modern era.

In an interview with the Dan Patrick Show Monday morning, CBS college basketball aficionado Seth Davis said this is the best defensive team he's seen in years.

He pointed out two major reasons why great teams might lose in the tournament: either their best players get into foul trouble or they have a bad shooting night.

With Kentucky, neither is a risky problem. Even if Towns or Cauley-Stein foul out, the Wildcats are so deep that they will not be irreplaceable. And even if the team's offense goes ice cold, it's vice-like defense is more than enough to carry it to victory.

I for one have no rooting interest in Kentucky, but when you consider the magnitude of what this team could accomplish between now and April 6, you can't help but perk up.

 

Reach the columnist at icbeck@asu.edu or follow @ICBeck21 on Twitter.

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