To celebrate 30 years of SLAM, we’re featuring the 30 most influential men’s college teams of the past 30 years. Stats, records and chips are not the main factor here, it’s all about their contribution to the cultural fabric of the game.
Over the next 30 days, Monday through Friday, we’ll be featuring full list here. We also have an exclusive retro collegiate collection out now that pays homage to the threads of each squad. Shop here.
It’s no secret that Kentucky is one of the most storied college basketball programs of all time and has one of the most demanding fans we’ve seen. Kentucky isn’t satisfied with SEC championships and NCAA tournament berths; The standard at Kentucky is national title contention. The Final Four and National Championship banners are the only ones hanging on the sides of Rupp Arena. So after another underwhelming season that ended with an NIT loss, they were willing to go through hell or high water to get back on track. Kentucky needed a change, and they needed one fast.
The first domino to fall was finding a head coach who not only understood the expectations, but wasn’t afraid of the day-to-day pressures of coaching at Kentucky. There was only one person to do that work. Before the 09-10 season, Kentucky brought the fiery John Calipari. a move that changed not only the trajectory of Kentucky’s basketball program, but college basketball in general.
Coach Cal did not come alone. he brought in the nation’s best recruiting class, one of the best ever, highlighted by John Wall and DeMarcus Cousins. Kentucky’s roster was loaded with talent, making these Wildcats a must-watch for any basketball fan (unless you’re a Louisville fan or an SEC opponent). Having talent is one thing, but getting a bunch of five- and four-star recruits to play as a unit is a real challenge for any coach. But the 2010 Wildcats were unanimous. Cal ran the dribble-drive offense, which only works when you have multiple guys who can beat their man off the bounce. Wall and Eric Bledsoe had no problem doing that. Add in elite bigs like Cousins and Patrick Patterson, and you have one of the most exciting college teams you can imagine.
Every time the 2010 Wildcats hit the court in their fresh white and Kentucky blue threads, two-tone Nike sleeves and Nike Elite socks, they got the attention of the country. If Kentucky had a game, you would plan your day around it.
For a squad led by a freshman core, Kentucky was mature beyond their years. Nothing shocked them. no moment was too big. They rolled through the always-tough SEC, sweeping both the regular-season and tournament championships along with a slew of individual accolades.
Wall was the SEC Player of the Year. Cousins was the SEC Freshman of the Year. Cousins, Patterson and Wall were first-team All-SEC. Coach Cal was the SEC Coach of the Year.
Kentucky hasn’t had a season like this in years. the work was not over, however. From the coaching staff to the last man on the bench to the team managers, everyone who was part of the program rose to the task of hoisting the eighth national championship banner.
“The ultimate goal was to win a national championship, that’s all we wanted to do,” John Wall said in a 2016 interview, summing up the 2010 season. “So what we did all season meant nothing.”
Kentucky earned a No. 1 seed in the NCAA tournament. They destroyed East Tennessee State, Wake Forest and Cornell, respectively, en route to an Elite Eight berth where they would face No. 2 seed West Virginia. By every metric, and especially the eye test, Kentucky was the better team. West Virginia always comes out tough, but it never occurred to Kentucky that they would lose that game. Unfortunately for the Wildcats, they chose the wrong day to sleep. They couldn’t buy three, at one point they missed 20 in a row. That’s tough for any team to overcome, especially during March Madness. They would still find themselves in a close game, but blew a seven-point lead to advance to what would have been the program’s first Final Four appearance since 1998.
Talk about the devastated. there was no eye in the locker room after the game. “To this day, we still talk about that game and what we could have done differently,” DeMarcus Cousins said in the same 2016 interview mentioned earlier.
Despite the expectations that do not live up to themselves, there is not a person who does not call his season a success. They finished the season 35-3, and Wall and Cousins added first-team All-American honors to their long list of accomplishments. They may not be remembered as national champions. 2010 may not depend on Rupp Arena. but this team revolutionized college basketball.
Five players from this team (four of whom are freshmen) will enter the NBA draft, and all five were drafted in the first round. Wall was selected No. 1, Cousins 5, Patterson 14, Bledsoe 18 and Orton 29. This 2010 Kentucky team, developed by Coach Cal, set the stage for the future of the sport; the ripple effect is still felt today more than a decade later.
If you could pick just one college basketball team from the past 30 years that represents the current generation, both on and off the court, it would be hard not to pick the 2010 Kentucky Wildcats.
Photos via Getty Images.
