Calipari ready to rebuild
Kentucky could lose top 6 players
NEW ORLEANS — They brought college basketball’s national championship trophy to Kentucky’s rapturous Rupp Arena on Tuesday — Anthony Davis and Michael Kidd-gilchrist, Terrence Jones and Marquis Teague and Doron Lamb.
It had the look of a final curtain call. Most, if not all, of the Wildcats’ gifted freshmen and sophomores figure to move on to the NBA’S June draft, leaving coach John Calipari to remake the lineup and virtually the roster next season.
It looms as the largest turnover for a defending champion since Florida said goodbye to the top six players on the Joakim Noah- and Al Horford-led team that won the second of back-toback NCAA titles in 2007. The Gators didn’t make the NCAA tournament field again until 2010.
Calipari, however, already is lining up the latest in a recent series of elite recruiting classes.
Counting outgoing senior Darius Miller as well, Calipari says he anticipates his first championship team yielding as many as half a dozen firstround picks.
“We were the first program to have five (in the 2010); let’s have six,” he said after Kentucky defeated Kansas 67-59 in Monday night’s NCAA final.
“That’s why I’ve got to go recruiting on Friday.”
The centerpiece of the Wildcats’ six-game march through the tournament, shot-blocking freshman Davis, reinforced projections that he’ll be the top overall pick with 24 points, 30 rebounds and 11 blocks combined in the victories against Louisville and Kansas.
If they lose all of the rest of their young starters, the ’Cats will have to replace 96% of their scoring, 92% of their rebounding and every assist and block in those two games. Freshman forward Kyle Wiltjer would be the only returnee to play in either game.