College basketball winners and losers

College basketball winners and losers

By Jason King, Yahoo! Sports
http://rivals.yahoo.com/ncaa/basketball/news?slug=jn-winlose012310&prov=yhoo&type=lgns

That didn’t take long.

In his first season as Kentucky’s coach, John Calipari’s Wildcats will be the No. 1 team in America when the new Associated Press poll is released Monday. Kentucky – the nation’s only remaining undefeated team – will replace a Texas team that is stinging following back-to-back losses against Kansas State and Connecticut.

“This team was an NIT team [a year ago],” Calipari told reporters Saturday. “And I’m playing with a bunch of children. But they’re very good children.”

Indeed, the Wildcats’ start three freshmen – but all of them could be lottery picks in this summer’s NBA draft. John Wall, DeMarcus Cousins and Eric Bledsoe combined for 42 of Kentucky’s points in Saturday’s 101-70 thrashing of Arkansas at Rupp Arena. The win improved Kentucky’s record to 19-0 overall and 4-0 in SEC play.

“They just hit a buzzsaw today,” Calipari said. “I think we would have smashed anyone in the country today. That’s not arrogance, but that’s as good as we’ve played for the first 20 minutes. We would’ve beaten a lot of teams today.”

Kentucky is hoping to stay atop the polls longer than Texas, which held its No. 1 ranking for just one week before it lost at Kansas State Monday night. That setback wasn’t as difficult to stomach as Saturday’s 14-point loss to unranked Connecticut, which shot 55 percent against the Longhorns while outrebounding one of the nation’s best top frontcourts 31-29.

Like Kentucky, three of Texas’ top six players are freshmen.

“It’s been great for the younger guys to go through this and realize that right now, at this time of the year, the intensity has to go up,” Texas coach Rick Barnes said.