A lot happens over the course of a college basketball season.
For Kentucky basketball fans, every team marches into history and the collective consciousness of the fan base with a few marks that they are remembered by.
Today's roundtable...
Besides the abrupt and unexpected cancellation of conference tournaments and the NCAA Tournament, what will you remember most about the 2019-20 Kentucky basketball season?
David Sisk: I'll remember how good Immanuel Quickley became. Those types of things are usually what I take away from a season. For example, Tyler Herro is what I'll remember from 2018-19. I hope an NBA team gives him a chance, but I'll always remember him as being nearly an unstoppable scorer for the 2019-20 team.
Jeff Drummond: My biggest memory of this team will be how far Nick Richards and Immnauel Quickley came by choosing to return to college for another season. Richards fulfilled the potential that scouts saw in him as a raw high school player who didn't have much experience under his belt. He's a great example of why we should never give up on a kid with talent. Quickley may have been an even bigger shocker. If you went back to last summer and asked people who the Cats' leading scorer would be during the upcoming season, you would likely get the most votes for Tyrese Maxey, the second-most for Ashton Hagans or Nick Richards, and then maybe E.J. Montgomery or Immanuel Quickley. Heck, some wishful thinking fans may have even thrown Kahlil Whitney ahead of him. No one outside of the program and the team's inner circle saw this coming. He was going to be Guard No. 3 and a complimentary player. Quickley turned into the SEC Player of the Year. A remarkable story.
Travis Graf: What I’ll remember most is how inconsistent this team was, while still finding ways to win. The 2020 Kentucky squad could just not blow a team out, despite looking like they had turned the corner multiple times. It was also a year of shown development, with Cal relying on multi-year guys instead of stud freshmen. ‘Junior Nick Richards’ transformed into one of the best big men in college basketball after not being able to do much (or catch a pass consistently) in years one and two. Immanuel Quickley went from a solid contributor, who people thought would play third fiddle to Hagans and Maxey in the back court, to SEC Player of the Year. Both Quickley and Richards were players who some people had penciled in as transfer risks at different points in their careers.
Justin Rowland: I think I'm going to remember this as different team than John Calipari has typically had. They were not overwhelming or dominant really at any point during the year, but they were sneaky good. Rather than relying heavily on a star-studded freshman class, they were an an older team with players who stuck around for one or two extra years and started to see the payoff as individuals and collectively. A lot of Kentucky fans have been wanting a team like that. It took some fans a while to warm to this team, understandably after the play early in the season, but guys like Immanuel Quickley and Nick Richards are going to be remembered very fondly.
