INDIANAPOLIS – Willie Cauley-Stein became Kentucky’s 25th consensus All-American on March 30. His path to get there was long, different and remarkable. Now, Cauley-Stein is perhaps the face of college basketball’s first-ever 38-0 team.”It’s just crazy to think about the last three years of losing first round in the NIT against Robert Morris,” Cauley-Stein said. “Coming back and finding a way to get back to a title game, coming up short, having a chance to come back and do it again.”Cauley-Stein came to Kentucky as a four-star recruit and the 40th-ranked prospect in the country, according to Rivals.com. At most any other school, the 7-footer, who played both wide receiver and safety in high school, would have been one of the top recruits in the class.Instead, Cauley-Stein was the lowest-ranked recruit of Kentucky’s four-member 2012 class, including being the second-best prospect at his own position. The star of that class was Nerlens Noel, the No. 1 center in the country and the No. 2 overall prospect.Cauley-Stein played well as a freshman, earning Freshman All-Southeastern Conference honors, but never had the pressure on him that he did as a sophomore, or especially as a junior.In his second year in Lexington, Cauley-Stein became a defensive star for the Wildcats, becoming just the third player in program history to block more than 100 shots in a season, and tied Noel for the second most in single-season history with 106.As the Wildcats picked up steam heading into the NCAA Tournament, Cauley-Stein had everything made up in his mind. Silence some critics, hopefully win a championship and then head off to the NBA. Then, just four minutes after entering the game against Louisville in the Sweet 16, Cauley-Stein went down with a season-ending ankle injury.”It’s just, everything happens for a reason,” Cauley-Stein said. “… Getting injured and coming back, I was thinking about going the whole time until I got injured. End up coming back and end up being part of history and end up doing stuff people didn’t really think you could do.”That “stuff” includes earning first team All-America honors from the Sporting News, Associated Press, National Association of Basketball Coaches and the United States Basketball Writers Association.”How far Willie has come in his career is truly ridiculous,” Calipari said.And Coach Cal would know. The newly crowned AP National Coach of the Year first saw Cauley-Stein in AAU game where he was guarded by a 6-foot-4 player, and yet the freakishly athletic forward finished with just two points – though Cauley-Stein argues he scored more.”He has come so far as a player, but more importantly as a person,” Calipari said. “He came in saying, ‘You know what, I don’t like academics, I’m going to do what you’re making me do.’ He and I became book club members together. I would make him read books. He and I would discuss books. One of the things he said last year is, I’m enjoying school. That’s what we’re supposed to be about. … Now he’s going into his junior year, here is a kid that averages under double figures and is one of the top players in the country ’cause he’s that selfless about his team. It’s a good part about what we do, to see that kind of growth.” Speaking to the media Friday in a private room, Cauley-Stein, who has previously said that his favorite book read from his book club with Calipari is “The Energy Bus” by Jon Gordon, talked about Calipari in a different light than just being a basketball coach.”He’s like a life teacher,” Cauley-Stein said of Calipari. “He’s a life coach. He doesn’t just coach the game of basketball. He wants us to become men. It’s not all about basketball. It’s not all about wins. Regardless whether we won games or not, Coach Cal is still going to be Coach Cal. He’s still going to be really successful. He’s still going to do all the things he does. I think one of his biggest teaching moments is actually making us into young men and teaching us life skills to use when we’re done playing basketball, or when we take the next step.”And due to the play of Cauley-Stein, considered one of the favorites to win the National Defensive Player of the Year award, that next step looks to be coming sooner rather than later. In the latest NBA Draft projections, Cauley-Stein appears set to become a top-10 pick. Though he’s averaging just 9.1 points and 6.5 rebounds per game, Cauley-Stein is playing with great confidence on the floor, as well as a chip that rests on his shoulder placed by his critics.The knock on the SEC Defensive Player of the Year has always been that he can’t score or that he’s not a true all-around basketball player.”I don’t know how you can be an All-American in this country and not be a good basketball player,” Cauley-Stein said.But the biggest knock by critics may not be what he does or doesn’t do on the court, but perhaps all of his interests off of it.”Me being interested in three or four different things, then they say, ‘Well, you don’t love the game of basketball,’ ” Cauley-Stein said. “I mean, that’s nonsense to me. Why would I come to Kentucky if I didn’t love the game of basketball? This is the hardest place to play, in my opinion. You just have to know what you think and it doesn’t really matter what everybody else thinks. You know what you’ve done and what you’ve been through to get to where you are.”In this journey from a basketball player who once played football to a likely top-10 NBA Draft pick, Cauley-Stein has always been able to keep things in perspective.Now just two wins away from making history as the sport’s first 40-0 team and the first undefeated national champion in 39 years, Cauley-Stein and Kentucky ready themselves to face a talented Wisconsin team that has revenge on its mind. Either way, history will be made this weekend, Cauley-Stein is just hoping it’s the good kind.”If we ended up winning it all we’ll go down in history,” Cauley-Stein said. “If we end up losing we’ll still go down in history being talked about going undefeated until we lost it. Either way we’re going to be talked about. But us, we want to be talked about in a good way, not like a letdown.”