Cats Focusing on Next Step, Not Tough Path

For most of the college basketball world, Selection Sunday is like Christmas. For Kentucky, meanwhile, it was one big whirlwind.

First there was the early wakeup call for a noon CT game made earlier by daylight savings time, then a bruising battle for the Southeastern Conference Tournament championship. Before the Wildcats even had time to soak in cutting down the nets in Bridgestone Arena, they were whisked to the airport for a quick flight home to Lexington, the Selection Show starting before they could even make it to John Calipari’s house to tune in to CBS with the rest of America.

That made things, well, a little anticlimactic.

“People I think started leaking stuff on Twitter about it and when we got here, I think walking up the driveway I’d see we had already gotten seeded,” Willis said.

UK (29-5), of course, received the No. 2 seed in the South Region, set for a first-round matchup with No. 15 Northern Kentucky (24-10) on Friday at approximately 9:30 p.m. in Indianapolis. Riding an 11-game winning streak and having won a third consecutive SEC Tournament, the Cats moved up from the No. 3 seed they received when the Selection Committee released its top 16 on Feb. 11.

“They said they put out the seed, we played into the No. 5 overall, which we played,” Calipari said. “Guys did what they were supposed to. They did it in tournament play and finished the year and won tough games and got down and still won.”

More tough games await. No surprise there.

The South Region features schools that have won a combined 19 national championships, led by UCLA (11), Kentucky (8) and North Carolina (5). Three of the team’s ranked in kenpom.com’s top eight are there – UNC, UK and Wichita State – as well as six teams in the latest AP Top 25.

“From what everybody’s saying, there’s a couple — can you imagine a couple brackets harder than ours?” Calipari said. “Now this is my eigth year. It’s not been close. Called it Murderer’s Row and Insane Row.”

Insane or not, the Cats are unfazed by the path ahead of them.

“We know that we’re going to have to play elite teams to advance to the next round,” Dominique Hawkins said, “so any team we play we’re just going to prepare for them and be very focused on what we have to do to beat them.”

Hawkins and Willis have been around too long and seen too many NCAA Tournament games (13 each, to be exact) to get too caught up in brackets and projected matchups.

“I don’t really care who we play, to be honest with you,” Willis said. “I feel like we gotta worry about the first two games rather than games potentially. I think our main focus right now is Northern Kentucky and after that we go from there and see who our next opponent is and get ready for them. That’s how we take all the games like that.”

That’s an approach honed over years of coaching by Calipari. There’s no looking ahead. Only a focus on the moment at hand.

“For us it’s just, let’s get started, let’s get this first weekend and see what happens,” Calipari said. “I’m not looking ahead. You guys know how I do this. We’ll focus on this weekend and see if we can be the best of that group and if we are, we’ll move on.”