The Beauty of Youth

Aristotle said, "Youth is easily deceived because it is quick to hope." If there's one thing we associate with youth at Kentucky it's hope. The hope of a national championship has been in the hearts and on the minds of every UK fan since John Wall and company first rolled onto campus. Now a new and even more youthful crop of players hopes to take us to the promise land. The generally perceived notion of young players in the NCAA tournament is that they fold under pressure - they beat themselves. It's not totally incorrect to say that a veteran presence is less likely to shoot themselves in the foot but there are exceptions to every rule. Hell, just look at Missouri. I think that this team is different, though. This team won't hit the same roadblocks that their predecessors hit in the past two seasons. That prediction will be put to the test in this Final Four though. Outside of Chane Behanan at Louisville, no team plays a freshman for any real significant time. Here's a breakdown of each team's minutes per game usage of freshmen:

Kansas - 9.8 minutes per game Ohio State - 35.0 minutes per game Louisville - 46.4 minutes per game Kentucky - 111.3 minutes per game

All totals are out of a possible 200 minutes per game and as you can see, there's a significant outlier in that group. If the Cats live up to their billing, is this the year that we finally stop hearing the old rhetoric about how freshmen can't seal the deal in the tournament? This team could be trendsetters in a long line of one-and-done dominated championships. I bet Bobby Knight would love that.