Cats just latest to chase perfection

Cats just latest to chase perfection

http://www.courier-journal.com/article/20100121/SPORTS03/1210368/Cats+just+latest+to+chase+perfection


Other teams foundthe road too tough

Brett Dawson • bdawson@courier-journal.com • January 21, 2010

LEXINGTON, Ky. — As coach of the St. Joseph's basketball team that pursued perfection in 2004, Phil Martelli fielded his share of crazy questions.

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Among the most common — and, to hear Martelli tell it, most absurd — was whether the Hawks should have bothered shooting for the perfect season they flirted with six years ago.

Wouldn't it be better, observers and analysts wondered, to take a loss along the way? Wouldn't that relieve some pressure?

“I heard that all the time,” Martelli said this week. “Who thinks like that? If you're a leading Wall Street stockbroker, you don't go into the day and say, ‘You know what? We've been on a good run. It might be better to lose a few hundred thousand today.'”

So you won't find Martelli suggesting that Kentucky (18-0), the last remaining unbeaten team this season in NCAA DivisionI men's basketball, can benefit from losing a game.

Another question that came up often as St.Joseph's marched through a 27-0 regular season — and it's coming up again as the Wildcats keep winning — was: Can it still be done?

In this age of college hoops parity, can a team win the national championship without having suffered a loss along the way, a feat not accomplished in men's basketball since Bob Knight's Indiana team did it in 1976?

UK coach John Calipari hasn't dissuaded discussion of an undefeated season, saying of his team, “I want them to dream big.”

He might be better suited than most to push his team to perfection, Martelli said.

“I don't think there's a better guy with handling the clamor and the attention than John Calipari,” Martelli said. “I'm sure what he's doing is, he's creating challenges for his players so that they're pursuing perfection on that day only, and not worrying about Saturday until Saturday.”

In the 2007-08 season, Calipari's Memphis team, which lost in the national championship game to Kansas, lost just once in the regular season.

And he's not the only coach in recent years to flirt with a perfect record.

“I don't think it'll ever be done,” Illinois coach Bruce Weber said. “I think the quality of competition is too good, the venues, the crowds are too good, the coaching is too good. You should never say never, I guess, but I think it'll be very, very difficult.”

Weber's team made it to the final game of the regular season in 2005 before suffering a loss, 65-64 at Ohio State. The Fighting Illini didn't lose again until North Carolina beat them in the NCAA title game.

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That came a year after Martelli and point guard Jameer Nelson led St.Joseph's to an unbeaten regular season. The Hawks lost to Xavier in the quarterfinals of the Atlantic10 Tournament, and then to Oklahoma State in an NCAA Tournament regional final.

UK is the last team this season with a chance to match the '76 Hoosiers. But the closer the Wildcats get, the harder that proposition might become.

“The challenge is to stay within the operation, stay within the program,” said Quinn Buckner, a starter on the unbeaten Indiana team. “Coach Knight was great at this. He would say, ‘Don't worry about what the media and those people outside this door say. You need to do what I tell you to do.'”

And for all the challenges that an unbeaten team will face from opponents, those who have taken a swing at perfection will tell you that outside influences can create just as many obstacles.

“They're 18-, 19-, 20-year-old kids,” Martelli said. “They're going to be walking across campus, they're going to go into the cafeteria, they're going to go to the movies, and somebody is going to say, ‘Can you do it?' So what Cal is going to do is, he's going to stay focused on just today.”

Knight kept his Hoosiers focused on improving each possession — in every practice and every game — to the extent that Indiana was “playing against the game rather than the opponent,” Buckner said.

“That tends to keep you out of the valleys and peaks of playing well against good teams and lowering yourself to (the level of) teams that are not quite as talented or as capable as you are,” Buckner said. “That's hard for 18-, 19-year-olds.”

Meanwhile, motivation is no issue for an unbeaten team's opponents.

“Watching (previously unbeaten) Texas lose at Kansas State on Monday, that's when it really hit me that you have to appreciate what our guys did (in 2005) to stay unbeaten so long,” Weber said. “You go on the road in conference, and it's just so easy to slip up somewhere along the way.”

Whenever an NFL team flirts with perfection and falls short, members of the 1972 Miami Dolphins — the only undefeated Super Bowl champion — celebrate the fact that their accomplishment won't be matched.

Buckner and his old Indiana teammates don't do the same each college basketball season, he said. And he predicted that eventually the Hoosiers will salute an undefeated champion.

“All of us are now in our 50s, and I think we all view it as, if somebody wins it and goes undefeated, great for them,” Buckner said. “That will be some great memories for those young men. It won't take away from the success that the '76 team had.

“I think someone will do it. I don't know who, but Kentucky's got some good players down there. They've got a great shot.”

Brett Dawson can be reached at (859) 523-0706.