The NCAA tournament for men’s basketball took place in New Orleans, Monday, April 2, where the Kentucky Wildcats came out with a championship.
In this year’s game, the Wildcats had six players scoring between nine and 15 points, along with having the best freshmen defensive player since Patrick Ewing. Freshmen center Anthony Davis had six points, 16 rebounds and six blocks in the game.
Davis, who was given the Defensive Player of the Year and the South Eastern College Player of the Year, also had 30 total rebounds throughout the tournament, the most since Hakeem Olajuwon in 1981.
The Wildcats did not lose the lead the entire second half including having a 24-point lead at one point. The Kansas University Jayhawks had a very hard time controlling the ball and getting points on the board. They made a run cutting the lead to seven points late in the half, but Kentucky kept fighting back and did not let the Jayhawks come back in the game.
After a long year and a record of 38-2, Kentucky’s head coach John Calipari won his first national championship after losing in the 2008 championship game versus the Kansas Jayhawks. The difference between then and now is that coach Calipari was not the head coach of Kentucky, he was coaching the Memphis Tigers.
The following year in 2009 he was offered a job to be the head coach at Kentucky and accepted the position. Coach Calipari is now fifth all time in collegiate basketball, with 505 wins and 152 losses and one national championship.
Though the 2008 championship game was a loss for Calipari, he managed to turn around a struggling Kentucky program and last year he worked with four freshmen players to help their skills get ready for the NBA. Despite losing four talented players, he was able to mold a young team to become national champions.
The last time the Kentucky Wildcats won a championship game was in 1998. That year the Wildcats went 38-2 and they beat all of their rivals throughout the year.
