They went in these games and competed and did some good stuff.”
“We have some guys that it’s going to be a process, but they’re going to be fine - and we have some other guys that may be a little bit better than we even thought. “I learned about different guys,” Calipari said of the trip. New UK assistant John Welch is a grinder with a sharp mind. 1 recruiting class, just have better players. Or, hey, maybe the Wildcats, with their No.
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Maybe hiring longtime NBA assistant John Welch, bringing back former Memphis assistant Chuck Martin and plucking a new video coordinator from the pro ranks this summer is already paying dividends. When you don’t have three point guards, you gotta play different.”Įven if he doesn’t want to admit to the improvements - because that would mean an acknowledgement something was broken - Kentucky sure looked crisp and prepared, like it had a significantly better game pan, throughout the trip to Canada. But you gotta play with three point guards to play this way. “One of the Canadian coaches said, ‘I love watching your team play.’ It’s my old-school dribble drive. “Playing against older players, 22-year-olds, 23-year-olds, let them get physical with us and use our speed and space and shooting to negate (that),” said Calipari, who scoffed at the idea this was some late-career evolution. You may look at them and say, ‘They’re small, they’re skinny, they’re this,’ but they all can dribble, pass and shoot.” Tre is really legitimate, because you have a five that can shoot the 3, that can pass, can do those things and will fight like crazy. And even when his big men come back, he said, “I kind of like Tre at the five. The approach will be “no different,” said Calipari, who also teased that this could be a team that shoots 25-plus 3s per game. Now, will he stick with it when either or both of those guys return? 15xdC5dPYDĪnother word of caution here: FIBA rules, especially the 24-second shot clock, contributed to the offensive explosion - and the absence of both Kentucky’s 7-footers, injured Aaron Bradshaw and Ugonna Onyenso, forced Calipari to play small ball.
The four shot charts from Kentucky’s 4-0 trip to GLOBL JAM. Unofficially, the Cats attempted just 29 2-pointers outside the lane in four games. The shot charts were a picture of modern offense, peppered with dots outside the arc and inside the paint, with very little ink in between. That made last week, when he all but eliminated those empty calories from Kentuckys’ offensive diet, even more shocking. On the flip side, Calipari’s teams have been known for a stubborn devotion to the nearly extinct midrange jumper, the dreaded long 2. The Cats routinely rank near the bottom of college basketball in that category. That’s a pretty dramatic swerve in style by Calipari, who in 14 years at the helm has never had a team average 20-plus 3-point attempts for a season. They played four- and five-out with West Virginia transfer Tre Mitchell as a truly stretchy center who showed off the ability to shoot and pass better than any UK big man in recent memory. Calipari’s team shot 44 of 117 (38 percent) from 3-point range, an average of 11 makes and 29 attempts from beyond the arc. Kentucky had 103 assists on 142 made baskets with just 51 turnovers.
Even if you wonder just how good the competition was - Baylor faced a Canadian team that featured Texas star Marcus Carr, former Creighton and current Gonzaga point guard Ryan Nembhard and NBA Draft pick Leonard Miller, and this year’s version had far less fire power than that - the most tantalizing thing about these Cats was how they played with such limited time together: smart, selfless and downright modern. Instead, Kentucky went 4-0, averaged 92 points, won by an average of 15, and thumped host Canada twice (by a total of 41 points) to win gold.
Calipari warned that his own young squad might go 0-4. Baylor represented the United States last summer, as UK did this time, and went 1-4 in this event. Then two vets jumped on board, the Wildcats squeezed in 10 practices and it was off to play much older teams filled with veteran Division I players and overseas pros. Less than a month ago, John Calipari’s entire roster was made up of seven freshmen and two sophomores.
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