The Kentucky Wildcats are entering the upcoming college basketball season with high hopes. With what is being touted as an NBA-ready group of at least ten players, expectations for a national championship are being held by fans all across the Bluegrass State and beyond.

But are the young Cats ready for the NBA Playoffs?

One opposing coach seems to think so.

On Sunday, the Kentucky Wildcats dismantled NAIA Georgetown College, 121-52, in their final preseason exhibition game. Afterwards, Georgetown head coach Chris Briggs lofted some high praise in the direction of Big Blue Nation.

"Those guys are unreal," Briggs told reporters. "I told the guys in the locker room, [the Wildcats] could have beaten some NBA teams tonight, there's no question in my mind...I don't see how they're going to get beat this year. If they play like they did tonight, they're an NBA playoff team."

Of course Kentucky has bona fide superstars at every position, sometimes two-deep. Twin 6-6 guards Aaron and Andrew Harrison came up huge in Kentucky’s run to the national championship game last April. Up front is a trio towers Willie Cauley-Stein, Karl-Anthony Towns, and Dakari Johnson, all of whom are 6-11 or taller.

Add in Alex Poythress, a 6-8 Junior and Freshmen Devin Booker (6-6), Trey Lyles (6-10), Marcus Lee (6-9) and Tyler Ulis (5-9), and Kentucky can conceivably go 10 players deep. In fact, for much of the summer and fall, the Wildcats experimented with a platoon system that allows for plenty of balanced floor time for all the Cats’ young stars.

As for the NBA talk, Calipari is quick to keep things in perspective, even as his team is poised to do something that has rarely been successfully executed at a major Division I basketball program. (DIII Grinnell College, notwithstanding.)

Calipari took to social media to quiet the storm with this Twitter post:

“I hear Coach Briggs got excited after the game last night. Let me be clear: If we played ANY NBA team, we would get buried. ANY.”

Even as he fields perhaps the best team he has ever had at Kentucky, Calipari knows that winning a national championship is no small task and the path will be full of learning experiences for his young team and a fair share of downs to go with its certain supply of ups.

"No, this will be a process,” he said “We're going to hit some bumps in the road."

Indeed, this is a Kentucky team that, despite its deep talent, is also, in a phrase, very young. As the year goes on, Kentucky will win its share of games, but it will also face a sturdy schedule including games against five teams currently ranked in the top 25, including Kansas, North Carolina, Texas, in-state rival Louisville, and Florida twice. Each of those teams certainly has its share of potential NBA talent as well.

And there is the platoon system which may end up being more trouble than the early projections indicate. Sure, it worked in the summer against some thrown-together squads of foreigners and NCAA castoffs at a tournament in the Bahamas, and against Georgetown, which is an NAIA team (a good one to be sure, with a 2013 NAIA national championship, but still NAIA).

But what will happen as the season chugs along with guys who are accustomed to be feature players but who are going to get 15-20 minutes of floor time per game? Calipari has said that he will reevaluate his platoon system in time for the SEC schedule, but time will tell if he can make it work with his combination of youth, talent, and inexperience.

In the mean time, Coach Cal is doing and saying all the right things to keep his guys on the same path towards successful season. With the Wildcats opener against Grand Canyon just days away, the story will begin to play out soon enough.