There’s been a lot of understandable weeping and gnashing of teeth among the BBN lately over the fall from national prominence of “once proud Kentucky”.  There is a feeling that UK as a program shouldn’t have to go through these kinds of struggles, but I think it would be helpful to gain some perspective on UK’s performance the past few seasons by looking at what a couple of comparable power programs have gone through this decade.

There are two historically great programs that have been through rough stretches this decade.  UNC is familiar to pretty much everyone, but I think most people forget that UCLA also fell off the college basketball map not too long ago.  For those two programs I’ve listed seasons beginning with the last time each made the NCAA tournament prior to their first bad season and ending with their first season attaining notable success thereafter.

UNC

SEASON	RECORD	CONF RECORD	POSTSEASON	NOTABLE LOSSES
2000-01	26-7	13-3	2 seed NCAA, 2nd round
2001-02	8-20	4-12		Hampton, Davidson, Ohio (home), College of Charleston (neutral)
2002-03	19-16	6-10	NIT, 3rd round	Iona (Neutral)
2003-04	19-11	8-8	6 seed NCAA, 2nd round
2004-05	33-4	14-2	1 seed NCAA, Champs

UCLA

SEASON	RECORD	CONF RECORD	POSTSEASON	NOTABLE LOSSES
2001-02	21-12	11-7	8 seed NCAA, Sweet 16	Pepperdine (home), Ball State (neutral)
2002-03	10-19	6-12		San Diego, Northern Arizona (home)
2003-04	11-17	7-11		UC-Santa Barbara (home)
2004-05	18-11	11-7	11 seed NCAA, 1st round
2005-06	33-7	14-4	2 seed NCAA, Finals

Notice that UNC and UCLA each had seasons well below .500 that included some embarrassing home losses on the same order as what UK went through last year.  Both went through a coaching change (oddly enough both occurred in 2003), and both had a mediocre re-appearance in the NCAA tournament before getting back to the Final Four.

Now here’s Kentucky.  Since UK hasn’t had a below .500 season recently, I started with their last notable NCAA appearance which was the Elite 8 run a few years ago.

UK

SEASON	RECORD	CONF RECORD	POSTSEASON	NOTABLE LOSSES
2004-05	28-6	14-2	2 seed NCAA, Elite 8
2005-06	22-13	9-7	8 seed NCAA, 2nd round
2006-07	22-12	9-7	8 seed NCAA, 2nd round
2007-08	18-13	12-4	11 seed NCAA, 1st round	Gardner-Webb, San Diego, Houston

Wow.  Kind of makes you appreciate our guys a bit more doesn’t it?  Despite their struggles, at no point has UK been anywhere near as bad as UCLA and UNC have been in the recent past.  UK has kept their NCAA appearance streak intact while finishing better than .500 in conference every year – something neither UNC nor UCLA can claim.

I’m not about to predict a Final Four appearance for this year’s squad – that would just be silly.  But I think a Sweet 16 appearance is very much possible and I remain optimistic about this year’s team.  I firmly believe that once the PG situation gets straightened out everything else will fall into place and this will be the best UK team since 2004-2005.

Poll

I still BELIEVE! (that UK will...)

29%

Make the NCAA tournament

91 votes

24%

Make the Second Round of the NCAA tournament

77 votes

25%

Make the Sweet Sixteen

79 votes

4%

Make the Elite 8

14 votes

0%

Make the Final Four

2 votes

1%

Make the Championship Game

5 votes

13%

Make delicious burgers on their Foreman Grills

41 votes

309 votes | Poll has closed