By: LARRY VAUGHT
Sporting News columnist Mike DeCourcy was the first to tell me how special he thought Kentucky’s eventual 2012 national championship team could be several months before that season even started.
Now that Kentucky coach John Calipari will have his deepest and most experienced team in his six seasons at UK, I wondered how DeCourcy thought the 2014-15 team might compare to that 2012 championship team.
“I think at this point I am still not sure on paper this team is better than the 2012 team,” said DeCourcy. “That team probably had more issues at point guard going into 2011-12 than this team will have. This team has two excellent options (Andrew Harrison and Tyler Ulis) and that team only had one (Marquis Teague) and it took time to figure out.
“But Anthony Davis still is the best talent if you stack up everybody on both teams by far. That 2012 team also had Terrence Jones and Doron Lamb, a great shooter, and the all bought into Michael Kidd-Gilchrist. Then don’t forget Darius Miller.
“This year’s team will have more big bodies, but you can only play so many at a time before the defense gets sacrificed a little bit. I am not yet convinced this will be a superior team in terms of what rotation John uses. You talk about talented players, this team has more but what can John use and how will he use that talent.
“Nobody who wins a championshp plays 11 or 12 guys. You go back to (Kentucky’s) 1996 (championshp season) and see how many guys played a lot once the games got real. When they were killing teams, a lot played but in the Final Four and tight games the rotation was tight. This team could be the same way.”
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