INDIANAPOLIS — Going on three weeks now, John Calipari has turned his basketball practices into football workouts.To adjust to his team’s inability to finish through contact as officiating returned to its more relaxed, let-them-play emphasis, Coach Cal has brought out pads in practice, told his guys to make contact with their hands up and just play more physical.With Louisville, arguably the most physical defensive team in the country, standing in Kentucky’s way in the Sweet 16, Coach Cal ramped up intensity even more so this week.”It’s been as tough as any practice,” Andrew Harrison said. “Coach has definitely been pushing us and he wants to make sure we’re not satisfied.”Specifically, to prepare his team for U of L’s pressure defense, he’s told Jarrod Polson, Dominique Hawkins and EJ Floreal, who match up with the first-team guards in practice, to foul the starters.”We have free reign to foul them as much as we can,” Polson said. “There’s no referees in practice so we’re grabbing them, pushing them, pulling them.”The hope is, as Polson explained, is to prepare the Wildcats for Louisville’s smothering defense, which ranks second in the country in steals with 10.1 per game.”The hope is that if they can handle that when we’re actually really fouling then they can handle that in the games when there’s referees,” Polson said.How the game will be called will go a long way in determining just how aggressive Louisville can be with its defense. In the game in Lexington, 25 fouls were called on the Cardinals, neutralizing a bit of what they like to do defensively.”They definitely have a defense that pressures the ball and tries to get up in you,” Polson said. “I guess if they do call it tight that would be to our advantage.”John Calipari hinted on his weekly radio show Monday night that the officials are going to let the two teams play.”Here’s what the key is,” Calipari said Monday. “Can you play through physical play? Can you get open? Can you catch balls? Can you drive when play is physical? At this point, critical.”If the game turns physical, Coach Cal said that’s fine. He said his team has adapted and learned how to play grind-it-out games over the last month like it did against Kansas State, and when the situation calls for it, like it did against Wichita State, it can win a shootout.In the first meeting with Louisville, Kentucky turned the ball over just 11 times, a surprising stat for a team that has struggled with them this season, especially against a defense like U of L’s. As a matter of fact, the Cardinals’ minus-one turnover margin in the regular-season meeting was one of only two games this season in which Louisville has been on the wrong side of the turnover battle. The Cardinals lead the country in turnover margin at plus-6.8 per game.But to a man, players in both locker rooms insisted these are two different teams from the ones that faced each other on Dec. 28 in Rupp Arena. And defensively, Louisville looks more like the Rick Pitino teams of old than the one that UK’s guards, who were still finding their way at the time, had few problems against.The Cardinals said it took time for their new additions to adjust to Pitino’s defense, particularly the matchup zone.”The more we play it the better we’re getting at it,” Luke Hancock said. “So guys are making their rotations when they’re supposed to be getting in there, boxing out when they’re supposed to be. Early on in the year you just don’t make those rotations, especially with new guys coming into your defense because it’s not the easiest thing in the world to pick up.”To bring you more
expansive coverage, CoachCal.com and Cat Scratches will be joining
forces for the postseason. You can read the same great stories you are
accustomed to from both sites at CoachCal.com and UKathletics.com/blog,
but now you’ll enjoy even more coverage than normal.