John Calipari’s run in Lexington is over, but the conversation around his best Kentucky teams is still very much alive - and Big Blue Nation is not thrilled with where two of them landed in a recent coaches’ poll.
CBS Sports asked coaches to weigh in on the best college basketball team of the 21st century, and the results pushed Kentucky’s 2012 national championship team and the 2015 squad that finished 38-1 farther down the list than many expected. The 2012 title group came in sixth with 10% of the vote, while the 2015 team checked in seventh at 7%.
That’s a tough sell for Kentucky fans, especially when you consider what those teams accomplished. The 2012 group, led by Anthionfy Davis, won the national title. The 2015 team was one Wisconsin loss away from playing for another championship, and many around the program have long believed that team would have finished the job.
The teams ranked ahead of them were 2023-24 UConn, 2000-21 Duke, 2025-26 Michigan, 2017-18 Villanova, and 2006-07 Florida. It’s a strong group, but the two Kentucky squads in question still feel like they belong much higher in the conversation.
One voter made the case for the 2012 team this way: "They had only two losses, right? One was at the buzzer.
They had the first and second picks in that draft. You look at their tournament run, their championship game they dominated another really good team."
Another voter went even harder for the 2015 Wildcats: "I think it's 2015 Kentucky. I don't think it's close.
Two wins away from immortality. They had KAT.
I mean, look at the guys that didn't start. Look at Devin Booker, he didn't even start on that team.
That was Cal's best team."
Kentucky fans did not take the rankings lightly. Big Blue Nation reacted on social media with plenty of frustration, and the feeling was clear: these two Calipari teams deserved better. Recency bias, as the reaction went, may be helping newer champions crowd out what Kentucky built in those years.
Polls won’t erase what those teams meant, though. The memories of 2012 and 2015 are still as sharp as ever in Lexington, and Kentucky will be hoping another group gets its place on a list like this soon.
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