Win over UNC should quiet Kentucky's doubters ... like its coach

LEXINGTON, Ky. -- Kentucky is not a very good basketball team. The Wildcats are lost on the court. Their execution stinks. Not only that, but the execution really stinks.

Forget what you saw Saturday afternoon when the fifth-ranked Wildcats dominated No. 10 North Carolina in the first half and then barely held off the Tar Heels during the final stretch for Kentucky's 68-66 win.

What you saw was a team that's not quite terrible, but a team that's not much better than that either.

Those are not my words. Those are the words of Wildcats coach John Calipari. Me? I think Kentucky is pretty darn good. I think they could be great -- sooner rather than later. I think junior forward Patrick Patterson (19 points and seven rebounds Saturday) can dominate the post and can continue improving his outside shot. I think freshman point guard John Wall (16 points, seven assists, five rebounds) could be the No. 1 pick in next year's NBA Draft. I think freshman forward DeMarcus Cousins and rookie guard Eric Bledsoe will have a big impact on this program in their first years.

I also think Calipari is kind of crazy.

But Calipari -- who, I suspect, doesn't really believe what he said -- points to a couple conversations on the court Saturday that make his point.

After Wall was whistled for an offensive foul as he tried to drive the lane with 4:16 to play and a three-point advantage, this was the exchange between player and coach.

"What are you doing?" Calipari asked.

"I don't know."

"I know you don't know. We're trying to win this game. What are you doing?"

Then, this from Calipari, who casually mentioned that the team's practice Friday was the worst one he had seen in a decade:

"We walked out of three timeouts, and guys were asking each other, 'What play are we running?' We did that three different times."

But there's also this dialogue, a conversation that gives Calipari some hope about his team's overly-enhanced will to win. As Calipari walked the sidelines late in the second half, with the Wildcats (8-0) clinging to a lead, Bledsoe -- who combined with Wall to make 7 of 8 free throws during the final 2:31 of the game -- got his attention.

"Coach," he said. "Put me in."

"For who?"

"For Darnell [Dodson]."

Calipari acquiesced.

"He went back in," Calipari said, "and what did he do? He made his free throws and basically won the game."

Kentucky, like Calipari says, is an inexperienced team featuring three starters and one important reserve who are eight games into their college career and hadn't played anybody tougher than Stanford and Miami [Ohio] -- both of which, without late-game heroics from Wall, should have beaten the Wildcats.

And that's what they looked like in the first three minutes against the Tar Heels, who seemed at home before a record Rupp crowd of 24,468 that could be described only as tinnitus-inducing.

John Calipari still thinks his Wildcats have a lot of work to do. (AP)

But during the next eight minutes, Wall showed how amazing he could be for this program. He rebounded a missed 3-pointer from Marcus Ginyard and drove the length of the floor for a huge dunk. Forty seconds later, he secured another rebound, went coast to coast again and made a highlight-reel reverse layup in which he put enough spin on the ball to make Sean Hannity proud.

"It was a circus shot," Wall said. "I was amazed it went in."

He forced a turnover from Dexter Strickland. He assisted Dodson on a 3-pointer. He threw a ridiculous alley-oop pass to Patterson, and afterward, he looked into the frenzied crowd and winked. That's how you react when you're the catalyst for a 28-2 Kentucky run.

Yes, Wall made mistakes -- seven turnovers to go with those seven assists -- but he showed the ability that North Carolina coach Roy Williams expected when he first laid eyes on Wall at an AAU tournament in Philadelphia two years ago.

"We talked about trying to slow him down and get some help for our point guard [Larry Drew II]," Williams said. "Didn't feel like we did a very good job of that. I think John Wall is a fantastic player."

Wall has weaknesses, though. Early in the second half, his body cramped, and he returned to the Kentucky locker room for fluids. Thing is, he's scared of needles. Hates them, in fact. It took the medical staff extra minutes to find a vein to insert the IV, which must have been pure torture for a guy who had agonized the Tar Heels all game -- and the Wildcats gave Calipari another indication about the team he doesn't think is so good.

"I'm happy how this played out," Calipari said. "We had to play without John. Let's figure it out. Against a good team, let's see what happens. We let a good team make a run at us, and let's see what we do. Do we understand how to play and how to finish it off?"

It's what the Wildcats did against North Carolina. This young, inexperienced team found a way to win in its biggest test of the season.

"I know we have a long way to go," Patterson said. "I know coach Cal wants us to be that type of team we were when we made that run and to continue to do that the entire game. I think we're a tough team to play. None of us give up, none of us want to surrender, none of us back down. We know how to fight and we know how to battle."

The Tar Heels know it, and so does the national audience who watched the contest.

Maybe there's hope for the fifth-best team in the country after all.