How Kentucky could separate itself from other perfect teams with wins over Wisconsin and Duke

INDIANAPOLIS – Mount Everest is more than 29,000 feet above sea level, and climbing it is among the most ambitious and arduous voluntary endeavors on Earth.

Especially the final 3,000 feet. That's in the so-called "death zone," where lack of oxygen and freezing temperatures are threats to survival.

Consider No. 1 Kentucky's quest for 40-0 the basketball equivalent of an Everest ascent. The Wildcats have climbed long enough and high enough to see the summit – tantalizingly close – but in the process have reached the death zone. To plant their flag atop the sport, they have to survive the hardest part here in Indy.

Confronting Kentucky is at least one game against a No. 1 seed – West Region champion Wisconsin, 35-3, winner of the Big Ten regular-season and tournament titles, is the opponent Saturday. The Badgers are the No. 3 team in the nation according to Ken Pomeroy's rankings, possess America's most efficient offense and have hungered for another shot at the Wildcats for a year now.

Should Kentucky eliminate Wisconsin, the final climb to the summit Monday likely would have to be over another No. 1 seed – South Region champion Duke, 33-4, the No. 4 team in Pomeroy's rankings. The Blue Devils are led by the most accomplished active coach in the sport (Mike Krzyzewski), can match the Wildcats McDonald's All-American for McDonald's All-American, and probably have played the best four games in succession to get here.

Beating both the Badgers and Blue Devils to complete a 40-0 season would rank among the great endings to one of the great seasons in college basketball history. Kentucky will have earned its place at the summit.

Since the NCAA tournament expanded to 64 teams in 1985, only two teams have beaten a pair of No. 1 seeds in the Final Four – Kansas in 2008 and Arizona in 1997. If Kentucky runs the Wisconsin-Duke gauntlet, it would elevate the value of this season even more.

Should the Wildcats get through the most difficult final stages of this ascent – as opposed to beating Wisconsin and No. 7 seed Michigan State – it would rank as the second-toughest run to a title since 1985 by a No. 1 seed. The cumulative seeding of Kentucky's opponents would be 34 – No. 16 Hampton, No. 8 Cincinnati, No. 5 West Virginia, No. 3 Notre Dame, No. 1 Wisconsin and No. 1 Duke. The only lower total for a top-seeded national champion was North Carolina in 1993 at 33 – opponents seeded 16, 8, 4, 2, 2 and 1.

(The two lowest totals for any champion are 1985 Villanova at 20 – having beaten two No. 1 seeds and two No. 2s, and nobody seeded worse than No. 9 – and Connecticut last year at 28.)

Of course, if Wisconsin runs the Kentucky-Duke gauntlet to win the title, it will have completed an even more difficult NCAA run. The opponent seeding total would be 32, the lowest possible for a No. 1 seed. And it would include a takedown of the mighty Wildcats.

But for now, the team being measured with the yardstick of history is Kentucky. Which really doesn't fit the profile of previous undefeated champions.

There have been seven NCAA tournament champions with perfect records: San Francisco in 1956; North Carolina '57; UCLA '64, '67, '72 and '73; and Indiana '76. Four of those teams were led by a historically dominant player: San Francisco by Bill Russell; UCLA '67 by Lew Alcindor; and UCLA '72 and '73 by Bill Walton.

The other three were led by national Player of the Year award winners who did not attain all-time great status in the game's history. Lennie Rosenbluth was a national Player of the Year for the Tar Heels in '57, Walt Hazzard of UCLA was in '64 and Scott May of Indiana was in '76.

Nobody on the current Kentucky team is winning any player of the year awards. Center Willie Cauley-Stein has earned first-team All-America status, but he's not even averaging double figures and there is wide-ranging debate about whether he'll be a productive pro player. Nobody is ticketing him for future Hall of Fame status.

No, the Wildcats are 38-0 as a collective, a supremely rare amalgamation of talent that accumulates dominance via nine-man contribution. The leading scorer (Aaron Harrison) averages 11 points per game – less than half of what May averaged to lead the last undefeated team. Nobody averages 26 minutes per game – which could be a powerful weapon come Monday night, if Kentucky gets there, because fatigue-ridden players have been known to wilt in the final strides to the summit.

Even before hitting this near-vertical final ascent, the Wildcats already were stressed to within inches of defeat. They barely escaped third-seeded Notre Dame in the Midwest Regional final – a two-point white knuckler the type of which few of the previous unbeatens ever had to endure that early in the tourney.

Neither Indiana '76 nor any of the UCLA unbeatens nor San Francisco '56 ever had to sweat out a one-possession victory during the NCAA tournament. But North Carolina went through Heart Attack Central in '57 at the Final Four in Kansas City.

The Tar Heels played six overtimes in two nights (back then the games were played on consecutive days). They beat Cinderella Michigan State 74-70 in triple OT to reach the finals. They then withstood Kansas, its heavy fan advantage and Wilt Chamberlain for a 54-53 triumph in triple OT the next night

If Kentucky puts its legion of fans through anything similar in Indianapolis this weekend, it may not live to enjoy the spoils of 40-0 come Tuesday. But if the path to the summit goes through Wisconsin and Duke, the Wildcats will have earned every right to plant their flag.

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