Good luck doing anything against Kentucky’s frontcourt

Selection Sunday is still about a month away, but the story of the year in college basketball has been determined for a long time. The best way to contextualize this year’s Kentucky Wildcats is to think of them as Peak Tiger Woods -- a time when the gambling odds around the majors took on the guise of “Tiger vs. the field” rather than every man for himself.

That’s Kentucky right now. There are a lot of great teams this season, and anything can happen in a single-elimination tournament, but there’s no point in sugarcoating it. The NCAA Tournament will be John Calipari vs. history, Big Blue Nation vs. the haters and Kentucky vs. the world.

The focus on Kentucky has so often been on how it functions as a collective. That’s natural: there’s nine McDonald’s All-Americans here, and Calipari’s much-hyped platoon system often seems as much about forming group cohesion as it is getting everyone playing time. While it’s true that Kentucky has blue-chip recruits up and down the roster, there’s a reason only two players are projected to be lottery picks, barring a late push from freshman shooter Devin Booker.

To explain Kentucky’s domination, you have to start with its two monsters in the middle. It’s all about freshman Karl-Anthony Towns and junior Willie Cauley-Stein.

Putting two players this big, this fast and this skilled on the same team really isn’t fair. It’s hard to find an NBA team that starts two 7-footers. At the college level, it’s almost comical. If the talk of Kentucky being the best team ever has merit, it’s because pairing players like Cauley-Stein and Towns in the front court feels historically unprecedented.

There’s really only one team that comes to mind, at least for college basketball fans who have come of age in the last 30 years. This team was also led by an incredible front court with two future NBA All-Stars and had to deal with the same “best ever” talk throughout the season. We could be referring to the 2012 Kentucky team led by Anthony Davis, the one that went 38-2 and won the national championship. Still, that doesn’t quite fit.

To fully capture how good Towns and Cauley-Stein are, you need to go back to Gainesville in the middle of the last decade. Joakim Noah and Al Horford were pretty good, too.

SB Nation presents: Why Kentucky can run the table

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The group that led Florida to two national championships was known was the Oh-Fours, coined after the year Billy Donovan landed Noah, Horford, Taurean Green and Corey Brewer in the same recruiting class. Unlike Kentucky, their success was anything but preordained.

As freshmen, a team led by David Lee grabbed a No. 4 seed in the NCAA Tournament and got bounced in the round of 32. No one knew what to expect the next season from a team losing three starters, but the Gators came out of the gates on fire at 17-0. Florida would inevitably slip up in conference play, but it rallied to win the SEC Tournament and headed into March Madness as a No. 3 seed.

Once they were there, Florida took out Jeff Green and Roy Hibbert’s Georgetown team in the Sweet 16, Kyle Lowry’s Villanova squad in the Elite 8 and a UCLA team with five future NBA players in the national title game.

Noah was projected as the No. 1 overall pick in the draft, but decided to come back to school. Horford and Brewer followed, and the Toronto Raptors took Andrea Bargnani with the first pick.

The title defense was exhausting on Florida’s starters by all accounts, but they ripped off another 17-game winning streak in the middle of the year and entered the tournament as the odds on favorites. The Gators ran over UCLA again in the Final Four and then beat Ohio State in the national title despite a monster game from Greg Oden, who finished with 25 points and 12 rebounds.

Basketball is always a team game, and those Gators unquestionably meshed well. Green was the heady point guard, Brewer was a tenacious wing defender and transition threat, Lee Humphrey was the three-point shooter. Looking back on it now, though, it should be easy to see that the reason Florida was so good was because Horford and Noah were just way too much to handle for any other college team. (This should also let you know that Oden would have been fantastic if he stayed healthy.)

Towns and Cauley-Stein are the exact same way. In terms of style of play, upbringing and personality, there’s some scary parallels between these four players:

Cauley-Stein is Noah. He could have turned pro and been a lottery pick last year, but he chose to come back to school to have fun and win a title. Much like Noah, Cauley-Stein often gives off the impression that he marches to the beat of his own drum.

Cauley-Stein might not have Noah’s passing ability yet, but other than that they’re pretty similar. Both are incredible athletes who made a name for themselves defensively. Both are capable of guarding small players, like Noah has done in the NBA corralling pick-and-roll ball handlers and like Cauley-Stein has done this season at Kentucky, switching onto everyone from point guards to small forwards without hesitation.

Towns essentially grew up idolizing Horford. Both have Dominican bloodlines. As a 16-year-old, Towns played on the DR’s Olympic qualifying team alongside Horford.

“Al Horford taught me everything he knows,” Towns said. “How to play more physical. How to be a smarter player. How to set picks that are more effective. That’s the biggest thing.”

The Atlanta Hawks have become the biggest story in the NBA this season, and it’s no coincidence that Horford has been healthy after missing most of last year with a torn pectoral muscle. Few NBA fans would classify Horford as a top-10 or top-15 player in the league, but Atlanta wouldn’t be what it is without him. He defends centers on one end and is capable of scoring out of the post or by stretching the floor with a jump shot at the other. That’s the type of two-way animal Towns projects as, too.

What’s really frightening is that Towns and Cauley-Stein are actually bigger. Noah entered the draft at 7-feet, 223 pounds with a 7’1 wingspan, Horford checked in at 6’10, 245 with a 7-foot wingspan. Cauley-Stein is a little bit taller and longer and 20 pounds heavier. Towns is just as solid as Horford, only he’s 2 inches taller with a 7’3 wingspan.

If you remember what Noah and Horford did to the college game, it’s easier to grasp just how ridiculous the starting front court is for Kentucky.

This isn’t to diminish the Harrison twins, Dakari Johnson, Trey Lyles, Booker or anyone else. The reason Kentucky is talked about in reverent tones, though, starts with Towns and Cauley-Stein.

Maybe you’re rooting for Kentucky to enter the tournament undefeated, maybe you aren’t. Regardless, if the Wildcats are able to push this thing to 37-0, 38-0, 39-0, it is going to provide some incredible drama. If Duke, Arizona, Virginia, Wisconsin or Gonzaga have to see Kentucky in that situation, just know exactly what two players those coaching staffs will be losing sleep over.