Pursuit of Perfection.
That's the teaser ESPN uses these days for almost every reference to No. 1 Kentucky's men's basketball team. Now 27-0 for the season heading into Wednesday night's game at Mississippi State, the Wildcats are trying to become the first program since Bob Knight's 1976 Indiana Hoosiers to become an undefeated NCAA champ and the first ever to finish 40-0.
And like any good coach who's come up just short of perfection previously, sixth-year UK coach John Calipari isn't looking further ahead than the trip to Starkville.
Kentucky Wildcats
* Record: 27-0 (14-0 in SEC) * AP ranking: 1 * NCAA RPI: 2 * Best win: 72-40 over Kansas * Best stat: With last weekend's 110-75 loss at Kentucky, Auburn's Bruce Pearl became the 10th coach this season to suffer the most lopsided defeat of his career at his current school. In Pearl's case it was the worst loss of his career at both Auburn and Tennessee. * Difference maker: On a team with eight healthy McDonald's All-Americans, it's the guy who wasn't honored by the Golden Arches who's provided the Big Blue Nation with some of its most golden moments this season. Seven-foot junior forward Willie Cauley-Stein not only is capable of guarding everyone from point guard to post player, but he stuffs the stat sheet like no other Wildcat, averaging 9.3 points, 6.3 rebounds, 1.5 blocks and 1.4 steals a game while hitting more than 61 percent of his field-goal tries. * Reason to doubt: Despite a victory margin exceeding 22 points a game, UK has struggled at times against quickness, of which Arizona, Duke and Villanova have an abundance. * Will be trendy in Indy at the Final Four if ... the Cats can stay healthy and happy the rest of the way. Unless both of UK's "platoons" play badly on the same night, it's tough to see them falling before the national semifinals. * Prediction: Final Four * Coachspeak: "I don't know in my 20 years of coaching at the Division I level that I've coached against a better team than what this team looks like. They have everything." -- UCLA's Steve Alford after a 83-44 loss to UK in December
"(UK) is a good team," Cal said immediately after Big Blue's 110-75 bludgeoning of Auburn on Saturday night. "But now we've got to go on the road. Do you think it will be a T-shirt day? A white-out, a maroon-out? It's going to be something. So we have got another tough one coming up."
But is anyone tough enough to stop Cal's Cats from a run at history, especially before the NCAA tournament?
"I think because of the character and chemistry, I think that they certainly can (finish a spotless regular season)," Auburn coach Bruce Pearl said after absorbing the worst SEC loss of his career at either Auburn or Tennessee. "They are very physical defensively, and it's nothing like anything we've seen all year long. There's nobody in the league who's even close to that."
The Cats' season-long stats support Pearl's claims. They lead the league in rebound margin (7.9), blocked shots, field-goal defense (34.1 percent, first nationally) and victory margin (22.1, also first nationally).
And because no Wildcat averages more than 25.8 minutes per game, they never get tired, as they continue to run Calipari's experimental "platoon system" more than two-thirds of the way through the season.
"I've got nine, 10 guys," Cal has said more than once. "If one's not playing well, he can come out. Next man in. This isn't communism. You have to earn your minutes."
Pearl wondered aloud Saturday what earning those minutes must be like with no player averaging more than 11 points a game, but eight players averaging 20 or more minutes and seven scoring 7.5 or more points.
"I can't imagine what their practices are like," he said.
Offering insight, UK freshman post player Karl Anthony Towns -- rated by many as likely becoming the No. 2 pick in this summer's NBA draft -- said: "It's like a heavyweight fight every time you step into practice."
Said sophomore forward Marcus Lee in Sunday's Lexington Herald-Leader: "We always end up fighting each other. Cal has to stop (practice) because he thinks we're getting too rough."
Yet he also quickly added, "Once we step off the court, we're still best friends. That's how it works."
This has been Calipari's genius since he got the UK job in the spring of 2009, and why he'll likely be voted in the Hall of Fame later this spring. Despite sending 19 players to the NBA (15 in the first round) since he arrived in the Bluegrass, he's already sent three teams to the Final Four and won one national championship.
Count Pearl, who coached against Calipari's 2010 and 2011 teams, as believing this squad is more diverse than those teams.
"They're better at shooting the ball from the perimeter," he said. "If anybody goes zone now (on defense), their eyes get big, you know? And they're so much more dominant on the inside, because those guys can score. They're physically overwhelming. I've never seen freshmen that strong, that physical."
After losing 66-48 to UK in Knoxville last week, Tennessee coach Donnie Tyndall agreed.
"The difference between their freshmen and our freshmen," Tyndall noted, "is that those guys already have NBA bodies and our guys have to grow and mature."
And don't try selling Tyndall on the idea that Kentucky's stats signal more depth than talent.
"Someone said that they don't really have a superstar because they have a few guys that average eight or nine or 10 (points)," said the first-year UT coach. "But I said if those guys were on another team in our league they would average 16, 17 or 18."
Indeed, the UK press notes before each game show what the players' stats would look like if they played 34 minutes instead of the 20 or so minutes they're getting. Co-leading scorer Devin Booker would average 17.5 points instead of 11 a game. Co-leading scorer Aaron Harrison (who leads UK in minutes played) would average 14.6, as would Dakari Johnson. Towns would average 15.3 points and 10.8 rebounds instead of the 9.2 and 6.5 he's currently averaging.
Nor should anyone worry too much about the individual attention the Cats are or aren't getting.
"This is as center stage as it gets," Cauley-Stein of the UK experience. "Kentucky is center stage. I can't walk outside my dorm without having like seven pictures taken, so I think that this is pretty center stage."
Yet even UK's stage will grow larger and brighter from here on out, its continued pursuit of perfection currently college basketball's biggest story of the year.
So can the Cats do it? Can they win another 13 straight to claim the school's ninth NCAA crown five weeks from Monday in Indianapolis?
"The one thing I would be a little concerned about," Pearl noteed, "was if (the officials) would let them play, which I hope they would in a big game. I would just hate if they suddenly started calling it really different in the tournament."
The officials could, of course. But as much as ESPN analyst Dick Vitale believes any team finishing 40-0 "is a tough, tough thing to do," he also said last week in Knoxville, "If anybody can pull it off, it's this Kentucky team."
Contact Mark Wiedmer at mwiedmer@timesfreepress.com.