Chasing perfection: Two small Ohio schools know the challenge

With 24 straight wins, Kentucky is 16 wins from becoming the first NCAA Div. I men's basketball team to finish unbeaten since Indiana did it in 1976.

The Wildcats are tall, talented and deep. Even with underclassmen playing key roles, coach John Calipari has at his disposal an experienced roster with several players who made big plays during Kentucky's run to last year's national-title game. Calipari isn't afraid of chasing 40-0 and history, but he's tried to tell his players he's not fixated on it, either.

Late in what became a 71-69 win last Wednesday at LSU, Calipari refused to call timeout, instead choosing to let his players play through a tight game and adversity.

"I want them to know I'm not worried about losing," Calipari said afterward. "It's not going to change me, us, nothing. This is about us getting better."

In Findlay, Ohio, Ron Niekamp was watching.

Niekamp still works at the University of Findlay in Northwest Ohio, but he's retired from coaching. His 2009 Findlay team that went 36-0 and won the Div. II national title is the last NCAA men's basketball team to finish a season undefeated. The last time it happened in Div. III was 1998, when current Wisconsin coach Bo Ryan won the third of four titles he won at Wisconsin-Platteville.

That it's been almost 40 years in Div. I says completing a perfect season is a difficult task.

"We had two times in 2009 when being undefeated was really a burden, and that was early in the season and again at the end," Niekamp said. "Early in the year I thought our guys were already chasing 36-0, and that's a bad deal. Going undefeated doesn't come out of nowhere, and we had a talented, experienced team and we were ranked No. 1 right off the bat.

"I think we had good players trying to do too much individually at times. Guys felt they had to be impressive every night and were trying too hard, and it showed. But we managed to keep winning."

Niekamp's perfect team had what turned out to be a, well, perfect mix of talent, experience and health. All of Findlay's players that year were from Ohio, all had started their careers at Findlay and the Oilers suffered just one major injury all season, to sixth-man Tyler Sparks in the conference tournament.

By the time the NCAA tournament started, "We were wearing a really big target on our backs," Niekamp said. "We played against good teams. We just kept surviving."

A three-point win in the Div. II Sweet 16 came in a game that had 10 lead changes. The Oilers won their next game in overtime, came from behind to win their national semifinal by two and won the national championship on a 3-pointer at the buzzer that broke a tie.

Good players, good culture and good luck all play a part. For Kentucky, the biggest tests lie ahead.

"Will we get dinged? Maybe," Calipari said Wednesday night. "When that happens, we'll deal with it."

Niekamp said when he watches Kentucky, "I'm watching a great coach who's been in the game a long time. (Calipari) obviously has talented players, but they're still young. It's amazing what he's been able to do as far as keeping them focused, keeping them happy, keeping them up for every game. Anytime we're talking college basketball, we're talking young people -- especially when you're playing freshmen and sophomores."

Before Wednesday, two men's teams nationally were undefeated: Kentucky and Div. III Marietta College -- enrollment 1,300 -- in Southeast Ohio, just across the Ohio River from Parkersburg, W.V. At about the same time LSU's final shot missed and Kentucky moved to 24-0, Marietta started to run out of gas in the final minutes and fell, 102-92, at Mount Union University in a game that featured 40 made 3-pointers.

Marietta went home at 21-1.

"All year long we told our kids there were two things we needed to avoid, being complaceent and being arrogant," Marietta coach Jon VanderWal said. "We tried to keep our routine the same. We tried to approach every practice, every game the same. If I sensed any arrogance or complacency I tried to knock it out right away, but I never sensed much.

"I don't think we ever felt burdened by not having lost a game, and I think not feeling any burden is a big reason why we won 21 games in a row. It's just so tough to stay unbeaten for long because everybody's gunning for you. We lost (Wednesday) because Mount Union was really good that night, not because we got complacent."

Mount Union had three times -- and maybe more like four -- its usual crowd for the Marietta game. Word travels when an undefeated team comes to town. Excitement travels, too, and a fired-up team and a fired-up crowd can be ingredients for an upset.

"You know going into somebody else's gym as an undefeated team that you're getting that team's best shot," VanderWal said. "Our kids played hard (Wednesday) but we weren't very good defensively, and I think it got louder every time Mount Union made a 3-pointer."

Said Niekamp: "(In 2009) our closest regular-season game was at Lake Superior State; we won by five. Going up to Sault Ste. Marie, Michigan in the middle of winter isn't a lot of fun. You do something like that and play an opponent that has nothing to lose, and that's a lot of times how a streak gets broken.

"Kentucky doesn't have to go into any 2,000-seat gyms and probably has a nice charter plane, but in our league (the Great Lakes Intercollegiate Athletic Conference) you had 13-hour bus rides in some cases. And you don't plan on spending time stuck in a snow bank on the way to a game, but it happens."

No. 1 Kentucky has road games left at Tennessee, Mississippi State and Georgia; in another big game, Kentucky hosts No. 23 Arkansas on Feb. 28. The Wildcats could play three neutral-site games at the SEC tournament and are all but certain to open the NCAA tournament 75 miles from home in Louisville.

Marietta now will try to get back to winning and try to win the right to play its Ohio Athletic Conference tournament games on its home floor. It could play as many as four NCAA Div. III tournament games at home, too.

VanderWal said he's never been associated with a team that made it this far into a season without a loss "and never in a million years would I expect to. You love winning streaks, sure, and you try to put them together. But even if you start a season with eight or nine straight wins, you start getting everybody's best shot because you're undefeated. Everybody has a bad night, too, and that's why I think running the table in college basketball is one of the hardest things to do in all of sports."

History backs up that thought.

"When I hear it's been since 1976 that Indiana went unbeaten, or (1998) that it happened in Div. III, I think that's incredible," Niekamp said. "But I'm not surprised that it's so rare. I coached college basketball for 26 years and just winning any game on the road is tough. You have young kids; they sometimes lose the confidence or have the flu. You have travel issues. You have good coaches and good players on the other side. You might have foul trouble or one guy on the other side who just gets hot.

"A coach really does just want to win the next one, even if that's cliche. Thinking you can win them all, that's usually a crazy thought."