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Patrick Patterson
Given the very unfortunate injury that Nerlens Noel suffered in Gainesville, Florida on Tuesday, no doubt there are going to be many in the BBN that harbor some angst and or trepidation on what the fate of the Wildcat is for the rest of the season. There are those that see the abyss for John Calipari’s team.
To a great extent Cal himself has set the standard quite high and anything short of that is grossly but unfairly unacceptable. He has had the ability to recruit the right people and has been highly successful in meshing them into to a working, winnable unit. With the one-and-done concept we didn’t know when the down year would arrive when a near utopian situation wouldn’t occur but it was inevitable.
But hold on! The season isn’t over for the Cats. As the famous Yogi Bear said “it ain’t over til it’s over.” Often times when tragedy strikes strange things happen. The Wildcats safety-net is no longer on the back line to erase things in the lane. So sometimes the team rally’s around each other and plays their best basketball of the season. This particular Calipari team has had some difficulty in buying into the total team concept in which they depend on each other to collectively get the job done.
How do the Wildcats win in Knoxville Saturday? It’s times like these where the coach plays an even more vital roll on formulating a game-plan to exploit Tennessee’s weaknesses. Lets face it Kentucky is not going to run into another Florida until they play them again in Rupp Arena. They are definitely the class of the SEC this season.
Rewind the tape back to 2009 when except for cast of characters, the scenario is almost identical. Patrick Patterson had just gone down with a severe ankle sprain and the next game was Thompson-Bolin Arena in Tennessee. The fans were ‘oh my god what are we going to do.’ Some may say ‘will we were better then’ but The Vols were better then, also. What happens? The somewhat frail underachieving Perry Stevenson stepped up and played arguably his best game as a Wildcat. The Cats blew the doors of the Vols to the tune of 90-72.
Will that happen Saturday? We won’t know until then. And if it does will it sustain itself for the rest of the season. Again that we don’t know and often they rally last for only the game that comes right after the tragedy. But let’s play them one at a time. The team hears all the doom and gloom and they adopt that ‘we’ll show them’ mentality.
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