Top teams countdown – No. 1: 1996 Untouchables ‘dominated’ opponents
November 7, 2012
By Cody Porter | @KernelPorter
The 1996 UK basketball team is one of college hoops lore.
It was electricity personified.
Audiences were captivated by the squad’s ability to “dominate” opponents.
That ability brought the illustrious nickname that now portrays those Cats: The Untouchables.
Featuring nine NBA players and 10 All-Americans, the Cats needed a bump in the road during their third game against UMass to realize their capabilities, a moment former guard Derek Anderson said is when everything “started clicking.”
Upon that moment occurring, the Cats reeled off a school-record 27 consecutive wins, as they became the first team in 40 years to go undefeated (16-0) in SEC play.
“I just remember beating teams so bad — just seeing guys actually quit. It was fun, but it was almost like a thrill to see guys give in to our pressure,” Anderson said.
The Cats rolled to 20-plus-point wins in 20 of its 36 games, scoring triple digits in nine of those. Tourney time didn’t halt the dwarfing of opponents, either. UK’s opening round game was a 110-72 defeat of San Jose State and its Elite Eight matchup resulted with a 83-63 win over the Tim Duncan-led Wake Forest Demon Deacons, with routes in between.
“The people in the stands were like ‘We’re not coming here to watch you guys play, we already know, we’re just trying to figure out how bad you’re going to beat teams,’ ” Anderson said. “That’s when we knew we were good.”
According to Anderson, or any basketball mind, it’s hard to slow a team when it can rotate in an entire new group of All-Americans. For head coach Rick Pitino, that was the method to his team’s destruction of opponents.
“It was physically impossible to outlast us in any game,” Anderson said. “If you look at these teams’ starting fives, they might have a better big man or equally match talent, but nobody could come and touch the rest of our team.”
Now a little more than 16 years removed from that historic title-capturing season, those Cats maintain the contact with one another that created their fluid on-court movement.
“We actually all hung together,” Anderson said. “We went to the bowling every Friday, we went to laser tag, we went to the movies — there would be 13 guys at the movie theater and they would be like, ‘What is going on?’ But we did it, and it wasn’t planned.”
Once CBS sportscaster Jim Nantz deemed the 2012 team’s coronation complete, fans and players alike began the debate of 1996 vs. 2012.
Like the ’96 squad, head coach John Calipari’s championship team became known for being a close-knit group; just see the Michael Kidd-Gilchrist “Breakfast Club.”
“Most of the people saying something about 2012 are young people who didn’t get the chance to watch us play,” Anderson said. “I don’t think anyone five years removed out would judge any other way besides the ‘96 team.”
For those choice few, Anderson’s guidance is a reason to see the electricity, one-fifth of the Cats’ domination — Ron Mercer and Anderson, formerly known as Thunder and Lightning.
Anderson’s reasoning clearly states what made The Untouchables the clear choice: “Only because we dominated. There is no comparison … we were just way too deep.”
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