By LARRY VAUGHT
Kentucky coach John Calipari knows he won’t have an experienced team used to dealing with late-season NCAA pressure just like he didn’t last year.
“The lesson at the end of the day is you can win a lot of games and win leagues, but those last three games (in the NCAA Tournament) with a young team and the anxiety of never being in a Final four, not knowing how it will play out or going 0-for-20 … ? If they had been with me three seasons, there would likely have been a game or two where we started 0-for-20 and won,†Calipari said. “With a young team, you do what gives you the best chance to win.
“Players give us a chance to win national titles. We are about kids getting better and I have to learn how to finish off a season with a really young team. Only the 1948 team won more games (than last year’s team). We did everything short of (winning) those last couple of games. But if the rules don’t change, we will have a young team about every year I coach.â€Â
Last year the Wildcats had junior Patrick Patterson to lead the freshmen. He was a preseason All-American, proven player on the court and natural leader off the court.
This season UK’s most experienced players are juniors Darius Miller and DeAndre Liggins. Neither has had the past success Patterson had going into a season that will have at least seven new players on the Kentucky roster.
Calipari says he is looking for “service leadership†and not just lip service where older players ask younger players to get things for them.
“We do not need that here. We need them to challenge players to get better and then they challenge you to get better so you have an opportunity to get your dream,†Calipari said.
He wants players to understand as Patterson did that playing less and scoring less on a better team can be better for them, too.
“I understand parents want you to play 40 minutes and score 30 points. But we do not have that here,†Calipari said. “You’ve got to be strong enough to withstand all the chatter.
“Last year was the first time Darius played for me and played that way. Now all of a sudden you put him in the second year with me and I think he will respond.â€Â
Calipari says the three-game exhibition trip to Canada  and 10 practices that are allowed before the trip  will help “figure out who is who and what is what†on next year’s team.
However, he says he definitely learned one thing from last year.
“The biggest thing is that they have to be good people who respect each other and want each other to do well,†he said. “You cannot come to Kentucky if you want to be the only guy. There will be eight or nine on the same mission as you and have got to be there for each other. If one guy has a great two or three weeks, you have to be happy for him. If he slips, you have to be there to pick him up and tell him it will be okay.â€Â
8 Responses to Calipari must learn to win NCAA games with young teams
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Using Patrick Patterson as the ruler by which to judge the incoming and current players is a great idea, one I can get behind 100%. Unselfish players who want to be on a winning team, players who exhort each other each game, who focus on team and not on self, this is a plan I can get behind 100%. Yes, they will be young, yes they will be immature sometimes, but the reality is that many of the players will leave to make their careers in the NBA, unlike the players of the past. Reality is what it is, not what it used to be or what I might want it to be. I wouldn’t have anyone else at the helm of our team.
No comment, I’ve left enough for one day.
Don’t want to be misunderstood. I am a Cal fan thru and thru. But IMO a team, especially a young one, is so much the long arm of the coach that when they miss 20 threes against WVA, most of them open shots, one has to wonder if maybe the coach and staff might be a little too hepped up for the game—starting to feel the heat of having no championships perhaps? These youngsters were such a reflection of Cal, 99% of it being a great reflection, that I keep asking these questions in my mind.
Not complaining, just wondering.
It’s still a learning process for everyone I think, including the coach
I’m tired of hearing about the 3 point shooting in the WVU game. We had a bad shooting night. Kentucky was at best, a mediocre shooting team, from long range. Against Cornell we only made 3 shots from outside the line. Oppossing players, have complained for years about the Dome. The depth perception is terrible for 3 point shooters. Our first game there, we played the top outside shooting team, in the nation. They shot their worst percentage, from beyond the circle, for the year. Our defense was good, but Cornell had plenty, of open looks at the basket, yet couldn’t hit the shots.
Let me add a different perspective on the WVU game. In that game, UK scored 66 points on 73 possessions while allowing 73 points on 71 WVU possessions. 0.904 points per possession v 1.028 points per possession.
UK was able to win 2 of those 3 games because their defense carried the day despite poor offensive performances. Against WVU, UK had the deadly combination of poor offense and porous defense appear at the same time, a recipe for elimination from a one and done tournament format.
In UK’s other loss, @ USC, the offense was bad, not quite as bad as WVU, and the defense was porous, but not quite as porous as against WVU, but that combination again produced the Cats’ first loss. Ditto @Tenn.
In all other games, either UK hit on all cylinders at both end, or at the worst, hit on all cylinders at one end or the other, and prevailed in the games. 3 times in 38 games [1 in 13 starts] the team laid an egg at both ends at the same time.
For the really good teams, that is how they lose games. I don’t usually concern myself with really bad teams, but a similar analysis is true. They must hit on all cylinders at both ends to get their wins. If either their offense or defense is not at top form [for them] they do not win. Such teams may win 1 in 13 games.
You are right Prof. The defense may have been worse than the shooting. The Cats, I thought, played as poorly defensively as they did any time the last three months of the year in that game
Clarification. Somehow between my head and my fingers, I did not include a statement that the offense against WVU was the 4th worst of the year, and of the other 3 poor offensive games, the Cats managed to win 2 because of outstanding defense those particular nights.