ESPN Men's Basketball

On Saturday and Sunday, Anthony Bennett made news. The top unsigned player in the class of 2012 narrowed his list of schools from four to two. In somewhat expected fashion, Bennett cut out Florida and then Kentucky from his list , according to ESPN Recruiting analysts Dave Telep and Paul Biancardi, leaving just UNLV and Oregon vying for the No. 7-ranked prospect's considerable services.

In the abstract, that's a ... slightly surprising recruiting coup! UNLV and Oregon outlasting Florida and Kentucky? When does that happen?

In reality, it's not all that shocking. Bennett is looking for immediate impact playing time, and he would have joined a crowded Kentucky frontcourt, one that landed the top big man in the country -- No. 1 overall player Nerlens Noel -- just a few weeks ago.

Likewise, Xavier transfer Mark Lyons, who had been considering Kentucky but chose Arizona instead, takes a possible guard addition off the board, too.

Which means, allowing for the possible exception of another incoming transfer, or a hard push for another unsigned prospect (forward Amile Jefferson being the only real option), Kentucky is almost certainly done adding players for 2012. Given that, now probably as good a time as any to take a look at what the Wildcats are going to be in 2012, a season they will enter ranked again among the top five teams in the country -- even as coach John Calipari overhauls his lineup and incorporates an entirely new group of players.

That's nothing new, of course; no coach in the country has become more adept at reloading with top talent and competing at the highest levels of the sport each and every season. The reason? The trait we once overlooked about Calipari, and one that can no longer be ignored by even the most casual of college basketball fans: defense.

For all of Calipari's strengths as a coach -- recruiting, his flexibility on offense, his ability to stage manage young players through the public rigors of playing at a place like Kentucky -- his unique ability to turn teams full of young stars into committed, cohesive defensive squads is perhaps his best. One look at Ken Pomeroy's adjusted efficiency data tells the tale (numbers indicate national offensive and defensive efficiency rankings):


Since 2006, every single one of Calipari's teams (first at Memphis, then at Kentucky) has ranked among the nation's top 15 in adjusted defensive efficiency. All but two of those seven teams -- 2011's Brandon Knight-led Final Four team and the 2007 Memphis Tigers -- have ranked among the top 10. This, in essence, was the most remarkable thing about the 2012 national champion Kentucky Wildcats: As good as they were on defense, with Anthony Davis blocking everything in sight and Terrence Jones muscling on the interior and Michael Kidd-Gilchrist locking down the opposing team's best guard on the perimeter, Kentucky was even better at scoring the ball than stopping it. By the end, the talk about Kentucky's offense -- as led by "National Kentucky's Offense is Even Better than its Defense Month" creator John Gasaway -- finally caught up to reality. The blitz through the NCAA tournament (through quality Big 12 defenses like Iowa State and Baylor) was more than enough for the non-converts. The Wildcats defended like usual, sure. But boy, could they put up points in a hurry.

As that team collected its final accolades at the White House Friday, Calipari said he "may never coach another group like this." He was referring to that team's collective spirit -- which is what allowed it to excel with such balance on the offensive end -- and in more ways than one, he's right. The 2011-12 Wildcats were a uniquely selfless bunch, particularly for a group led by one-and-done stars, but they were also an innately brilliant offensive team. The chances that 2012-13 Kentucky replicates that performance are slim.

But by now, we know Calipari's teams, and what he does to get them to defend like mad almost as soon as they take the court, and it's safe to expect a similar defensive trajectory for his new-look squad. That starts with Noel, a massive interior presence who specializes in blocking shots. Many recruiting analysts believe Noel is already a better shot-blocker than was Davis, who set all kinds of team and conference records as a freshman. Noel is a different sort of player than Davis, a more traditional big man who's been big all his life (as opposed to Davis's freakish high school growth spurt), but it's safe to expect him to provide a similar role on defense: When Kentucky's guards and forwards are beat off the dribble, Noel will be there to cover it all up.

Knowing Calipari, that will be step one in building out another defensive force. It never hurts when your best recruit just so happens to excel precisely at keeping the ball out of the basket. Handy, that.

The bigger questions are on offense, where Calipari has proved amenable to changing his system based on the needs of his current group of players. Noel is far rawer offensively than was Davis, but Calipari has a pair of talented incoming wings in small forward Alex Poythress and shooting guard Archie Goodwin, the No. 3- and No. 4-ranked players at their positions, respectively. He will also have former NC State transfer Ryan Harrow inheriting point guard responsibilities, and the lone holdover from the 2012 rotation, sophomore forward Kyle Wiltjer, stretching the floor with his shooting.

It's not inconceivable to think Wiltjer may become Kentucky's leading scorer in 2012-13. Though Wiltjer played just 11 minutes a game as a freshman, he took the highest percentage of his team's shots (25 percent) while on the floor, and he excels at running pick-and-pop plays designed to get him open looks on the perimeter. As SI's Luke Winn wrote in his latest power rankings, a Harrow-Wiltjer pick and pop may become UK's bread and butter play, a win-win for Calipari and his players. If Harrow can spread the floor and utilize all three of UK's weapons on the wing, he'll benefit right along with Kentucky's offense. (Pro scouts love a good pick and roll point guard, after all.)

But the offense will be a work in progress for much of the fall, into the winter, and maybe even in SEC play. There will be no immediate, obvious dominance on that end of the floor, or at least we shouldn't expect it.

What we should expect from Kentucky in 2012-13, however, is more of the same. That doesn't mean a repeat of 2012's irreplaceable team. What it does mean is more of what Calipari has done for the past seven years: He'll take a lauded recruiting class and turn it into one of the 10 best defensive teams in the country, sooner in the season rather than later.

Once that's done, Kentucky can figure out how it wants to score the basketball. But the defense will be there -- early and often. With Calipari, it always is.

Kentucky is Kentucky, and UCLA is back.

Those are the two immediate takeaways from Wednesday night’s big college hoops recruiting announcements, when the No. 1 and No. 2 players in the Class of 2012 -- center Nerlens Noel and small forward Shabazz Muhammad -- announced their decisions within an hour of each other live on ESPNU.

The final result? Muhammad chose UCLA. Noel chose Kentucky. Life in Westwood immediately got brighter. Life in Lexington remained almost unfairly good. And despite all the anticipation and hype, in the end, neither of these decisions was particularly surprising.

UCLA coach Ben Howland was long the favorite to land Muhammad. The Las Vegas native never revealed his intentions, but the recruiting rumor mill -- I’m hearing UCLA, it’s definitely UCLA, that sort of thing -- always seemed to peg Muhammad as a future Bruin. Even after Howland endured the most embarrassing moment of his career this spring, thanks to Sports Illustrated writer George Dohrmann’s evisceration, Muhammad’s family didn’t discount the program or wave it off. Indeed, the Bruins’ recent downward spiral was apparently an attraction.

“Knowing how bad they were the last two years, it’s a challenge to get them back up to the top,” Muhammad said.

That’s good news for UCLA, because he is right: The Bruins and their head coach are indeed desperately in need of a massive, wholesale turnaround in production and perception in the years to come. After disappointing, disjointed seasons in two of the past three years, fans openly revolted against the program in 2012.

Now, with Muhammad and fellow top-five recruit Kyle Anderson on board, as well as the Wear twins and still-promising, still-frustrating forward Joshua Smith, the Bruins have a legitimate chance to make a run at the Pac–12 title in 2012–13. In the meantime, athletics director Dan Guerrero will unveil a newly renovated Pauley Pavilion, hoping this influx of talent can revitalize a fan base that tuned its beloved Bruins out for much of the past three seasons.

“Hopefully we can sell out Pauley Pavilion,” Muhammad said.

The kid gets it. The stink of recent Westwood frustration won’t dissipate overnight. But with his talents on board, Howland can still change his program’s dire narrative while he still has time.

John Calipari has no such problem. You saw the Wildcats in March: Anthony Davis, Michael Kidd-Gilchrist and Marquis Teague were each the top players at their respective positions in the Class of 2011, and as they mixed and congealed with sophomores Doron Lamb and Terrence Jones (and senior Darius Miller), Calipari morphed them into one of the most dominant national title teams of the past 20 years -- and easily the most dominant in the one-and-done era.

That was a special talent haul, one that can’t easily be duplicated. But Calipari remains on a roll: He landed the No. 1 class in the country in 2011, the No. 1 class in the country in 2010, and the No. 1 class in the country in 2009, when John Wall, DeMarcus Cousins and Eric Bledsoe paved the way.

At this point, you can write it in ink each and every spring: Calipari will have the No. 1 recruiting class in the country, or something very close to it. As such, it wasn’t even remotely surprising to see the top player in the country, Noel, commit to the Wildcats on Wednesday night. By the time Noel revealed his choice on the ESPNU set -- with the added flair of the UK logo shaved into the back of his now-famous high-top fade -- much of the social media world and those who follow such things were convinced the choice was Georgetown.

Silly people. Did you really think Coach Cal was going to go 0-for-2 tonight? Come on now.

Calipari was already off to a great start on the recruiting trail this year -- top–20 players Archie Goodwin and Alex Poythress signed on last fall -- but he was still missing the elite, top-five talent that has become a regular fixture in his classes since his days at Memphis. The search is over.

Noel’s commitment is not only crucial in a vacuum -- he is a massive and athletic center who specializes in dominant interior shot-blocking -- but it rounds out UK’s on-court balance, too. Noel will anchor the post. Goodwin and Poythress will star on the wings. Sophomore forward Kyle Wiltjer, a top–20 recruit who barely cracked the rotation in 2012 (as good an indication of the Wildcats’ talent as any), will take on a much larger role. And NC State transfer Ryan Harrow, the No. 10-ranked point guard in the Class of 2010 who left the Wolfpack after Sidney Lowe’s firing last season, will take over the all-important on-ball role.

Noel’s proclivity for swats will immediately invite comparison to the departing Davis, and Noel may well be a better shot-blocker than the Unibrowed One. But beyond that, the comparisons may be a little too eager. Davis was a physical freak who gained his physicality late in his high school career, when he sprouted 8 inches but somehow maintained his guard skills and agility. He was transcendent on both ends of the court, almost from Day 1.

By contrast, Noel is a lifelong big man, one whose offensive game remains very raw. (Though he shares at least this much with Davis: In a world full of 6-foot–10 prospects determined to play small forward, Noel is more than content to play as close to the rim as possible.) Likewise, for as promising as Poythress and Goodwin are, it’s clear there is no Kidd-Gilchrist -- whose combination of NBA talent and selflessness set the tone for UK’s special 2012 season -- to be found here, at least as far as we can tell right now.

Not that Kentucky fans will complain. Just a week after the program’s eighth national title, UK fans just watched live as the top recruit in the country committed to Big Blue Nation. A repeat of 2012’s dominance is too much to ask. But with another batch of talent arriving in Lexington this summer, Calipari’s unique ability to transform disparate freshmen into coherent, disciplined teams and a wide-open 2012–13 landscape, a repeat national title run is hardly out of the question.

At least one thing is clear: With Noel on board, the state of Big Blue Nation remains strong. And very, very talented.

It’s true: Life is good in Lexington.

In fact, it only seems to get better.

Archie Goodwin is a highly touted recruit. He chose to play basketball at Kentucky. In and of itself, this is neither unusual nor controversial.

Arkansas fans might not agree. After all, Goodwin is the best recruit from his home state of Arkansas. Razorback basketball fans are entering a new era: Mike Anderson is back, a highly touted class is arriving this fall, and Nolan Richardson's old "40 Minutes of Hell" system is about to wake up the mid-90s echoes once more. (At least, that's the plan.) At the time of his commitment, ESPN recruiting analyst Dave Telep asked Goodwin what he would say to disappointed fans in his own neck of the woods. To Goodwin, picking UK was nothing more than good business:

"That's one thing that is the toughest," Goodwin said Wednesday. "Growing up here and with so many expectations to go there, it's been a lot of pressure. Arkansas is a great school and I love Coach [Mike] Anderson and his staff. I love my state, but it's a business decision and this is best for my career and my family."

You can see what Goodwin means; Kentucky coach John Calipari sends a prodigious quantity of players to the NBA seemingly every year. In terms of exposure and national title opportunities, UK was the much safer choice.

That doesn't mean Arkansas fans are all that pleased with the explanation -- and they've been informing Goodwin of their displeasure on Twitter. (Ah, Twitter, where you can pester a high school senior for reasons why he didn't choose to attend your preferred school. Technology sure is great!) Goodwin's response was likewise filtered through the tweet tubes:

Ill always rep ARK. I got it tatted on my chest!! But I had to do what i Had to do. Point Blank Period

Has that squashed the beef? Not quite. Though the folks at Arkansas Expats understand (they would), some of their commenters don't. And judging by some of Goodwin's Twitter work in recent days, it seems like Arkansas fans are still being a little too uproarious on the Internet.

Eventually, that will die down -- at least until Goodwin takes the court against his home state's beloved team. Until then, as Goodwin wrote Wednesday, it's "Shoulder shrugs To the haters" [sic].

A few weeks ago, a concerned Kentucky fan asked me whether it was time to start worrying about John Calipari's 2012 recruiting class. After all, other schools had begun to rack up top commitments. Kentucky's 2012 recruiting class page was empty. Was Calipari in for a rare down recruiting year?

The answer was the same then as it is now: No. When you land the No. 1 class in the country three years in a row, you deserve the benefit of the doubt. Besides, more and more elite recruits are waiting until the last second to choose their schools, and Kentucky is one of the few schools in the country that can disproportionately focus its efforts on landing elite players. Calipari would be fine, I thought, and I didn't see this as a particularly provocative position. (It's not.)

A few weeks later, UK has added its first piece to its 2012 class. That piece is Archie Goodwin, a Little Rock, Ark. native ranked No. 13 overall in the class. Yes, that's the same Archie Goodwin who dissed Baylor's green and gold uniforms when asked why he turned his attentions away from the Bears. Apparently blue and white are more to Goodwin's liking.

Anyway, Goodwin is the No. 4-ranked shooting guard in the class of 2012, a talented scorer with a range of offensive gifts, and it was up to him to start the ball rolling in Calipari's quest to create the next big talent haul at Kentucky. As Goodwin told ESPN recruiting analyst Dave Telep, it might as well start with him:

Goodwin took a measure of pride in being coach John Calipari's beacon for the rest of the class to follow. "He told me he wants me bad and I'm a top recruit for him," Goodwin said. "No matter what, he wants the ball in my hands and he feels like me committing will probably get the ball rolling for the rest of the class. It's got to start somewhere."

Goodwin's decision was impressive in at least one regard, as he told Telep that he didn't expect any playing time that he couldn't earn on merit. That may be one reason some players are eager to wait it out on Kentucky this season: You just never know what could happen with Calipari's current batch of insanely talented underclassmen. If all goes as planned, Michael Gilchrist, Anthony Davis and Marquis Teague (not to mention sophomore Terrence Jones) will all enter the NBA draft next spring. But what if the lockout is unresolved? What if the NBA and its players add a year to the age limit in the new collective bargaining agreement? What if the immediate playing time isn't there?

It behooves the top recruits to wait and see. But that doesn't mean Kentucky won't have a top class when all is said and done. It just means it might take Calipari a bit longer to put together.

In the meantime, all those top recruits -- including the No. 1 player in the class, Shabazz Muhammad -- are still planning on attending Big Blue Madness, while Goodwin's commitment has already moved UK up to No. 22 in ESPNU's 2012 class rankings. Rest easy, Kentucky fans. Your 2012 class is going to be just fine.

This story is from Friday afternoon, so it's entirely possible you've already seen it elsewhere in the college hoops blogosphere. No matter. It's simply too good to pass up.

Archie Goodwin is a Little Rock, Ark. native who also happens to be the No. 13 recruit in the class of 2012. He's been going through the standard recruiting -- fielding offers, visiting schools, narrowing his list of potential suitors, and so on. But while a lot of prospects tend to politely sugarcoat the reasons they eliminate schools from their considerations -- "Coach seems great, I just want to be closer to home," et al. -- Goodwin has been remarkably candid, especially in this interview with Sync Magazine's Evin Demeril. Goodwin recently dropped Texas, Missouri and Baylor as three of his options. Why? Here comes the straight shooting:

“I did away with Texas simply because I didn’t feel like my relationship was strong enough with Coach Barnes. I can see myself playing for Texas, but I didn’t feel comfortable with him as my coach.”

Harsh, but fair enough. And fret not, Texas fans, because Missouri gets it way worse:

“I talked to the assistant coaches all the time. Coach Tim Fuller is one of the coolest assistant coaches I’ve ever known, but as far as the head coach, I really didn’t know his name. I couldn’t tell you the head coach’s name. He talked to me on the phone, but Tim was the one that mostly called.”

I'm going to go ahead and guess that if a recruit can't name the head coach of a program -- it's Frank Haith, by the way -- he's probably not going to be too interested in attending. Just a hunch.

Anyway, those bites are merely the palette-pleasing appetizer for the main course of deliciousness to ensue. When asked why he removed Baylor from his list, Goodwin got his Tim Gunn on:

“Coach Scott Drew is a great guy. I love Coach Drew. They were one of the first schools that were recruiting me. But I didn’t like that they were an adidas team, but that’s not to say I wouldn’t go to Kansas because Kansas is a great team. I can look over the adidas thing -- I own some adidas stuff. [Goodwin played recent summers with the Arkansas Wings Elite team, which is sponsored by Nike] I didn’t like their colors, either. I don’t like green and gold. That’s ugly …. When you got ugly colors like that, you gotta be Nike. …. Baylor has some ugly shoes, too.”

There are two reactions to this. The first is laughter. I mean, let's face it: Baylor's shoes are ugly. (But the uniforms aren't that bad!)

The second reaction I had was less about how hilarious Goodwin's quote is -- and it is hilarious -- and more about how unintentionally revealing it seems to be. We've long known how important shoe-company affiliation is to recruiting; that's why Nike and Adidas invest millions in grassroots teams and elite prospect camps each and every year. It's the reason the two spend so much money competing for major college sponsorships. It's all about brand loyalty, exposure, and getting early hooks into the next big product-moving NBA star.

But only recently has college football, with its score of schools now seeking to replicate the Oregon attention-economy model, shown us how much high school kids care about the actual uniforms themselves. Apparently, they do care. They might not care as much as Archie Goodwin, but it'd be foolish to assume he's a major outlier here. This might be one of the more underrated aspects of recruiting, something to throw in the kit next to coaching style, tradition, location, NBA development and gleaming facilities.

Is this a good way to decide your basketball future? Absolutely not. If Baylor is the right place for you, it's the right place whether the team wears green, gold, purple, pink, red or jerseys that look like vintage Marquette. (Actually, that would be pretty cool.)

But it's Goodwin's choice, you know? Silly or not, how he comes to his decision is, well, his decision. I wouldn't recommend it, but you can't fault the kid for his honesty.