UK alum Tom Leach has been the play-by-play “Voice of the Wildcats” for the football Cats for 12 years and nine years for men’s basketball. He is a four-time winner of the Kentucky Sportscaster of the Year award. Tom offers an entertaining and insightful perspective into UK athletics. Column entries will be posted twice per week through April. Read Tom’s full biography
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With three weeks to go before the NCAA Tournament, the identities of teams are pretty well established. So the focus is now on honing the execution of whatever way you play.
Last week, UK coach John Calipari said his team is talented enough to beat anybody it might face but also vulnerable to losing to almost anyone because of how they play (i.e. too many turnovers, defensive lapses, etc.). Can a team this young close much of that gap in these final three weeks before March Madness?
“We’ve got to,” Calipari said on the Big Blue Sports Network pregame show before Saturday’s contest at Vanderbilt. “When you’re in one-and-done situations and you give someone a chance, they start making shots they shouldn’t make and you get beat. You can’t put yourself in that position by taking bad shots, by turning it over. We’re stopping on defense and giving up easy baskets. You play the whole possession. If they make a tough shot, that’s OK, but not backdoor, not an offensive rebound because you were ball watching, not a play where you get caught on a screen because you just stopped playing.”
It’s the maintainence of focus on defensive assignments that is Calipari’s biggest concern on that end of the floor.
“The committment to play the whole possession is the only thing,” Calipari said. “We’re playing pick-and-roll better. But you can’t play for 24 seconds on the clock and that’s what young kids do and we do a lot of that.”
Calipari said his teams have normally started playing their best basketball by this time of the year, but he acknowledes that having a team this young means the past doesn’t predict that this group’s evolution will be as smooth.
Still, others are noticing significant growth in this Kentucky team from earlier this year.
Take Jimmy Dykes of ESPN. He was courtside for Kentucky’s loss at South Carolina and then last Tuesday, he worked the game in Starkville, Miss., where the Cats erased a seven-point deficit in the final three minutes of regulation to win in overtime. He remembers a comment Calipari made after that loss at USC about his team being “fractured” and not playing together as well as they should have.
“They were a fractured team that night on the road both offensively and defensively, I think that’s what he was talking about,” Dykes said. “Then I look at the game the other night at Mississippi State where that building was going crazy and just a phenomenal atmosphere for a game and Kentucky never got fractured. They stayed on the same page. It wasn’t one-on-one and one guy trying to win the game. There were multiple touch possessions and getting open shots for guys and taking what State gave them. I think they have really grown up in that part of the game. I think only time cures things like that and I talked to Cal after their shootaround on Tuesday and he said even their pregame shootarounds have more purpose, more focus.
“I picked that up with my own eyes watching. So they are maturing in different ways and they are rebounding a lot better and passing a lot better. I think there are a lot of things that are starting to come on. I think teams are still going to force them to make multiple 3s in a ball game. That game the other night, I think they were 1-for-12 in the first half. That is something that always concerns coaches and when you start breaking down teams for March Madness, when you get on that neutral floor, 3-point shooting is where things come back a few points anyways. Bledsoe will have to continue to make them. I know Patterson will have to make one or two if he can in game if he is open and when Dodson is in there, he will have to make them. I don’t feel that any coach right now feels great about their team in every area. Kentucky is no different and has a few areas that they can seal a little bit or work on percentages. I think for Kentucky that is where they still could be vulnerable in that one game. But they are so strong in other areas that they should be OK, I think.”
Fellow ESPNer Andy Katz and Dykes both agree that too much is made of how heavily Kentucky relies on freshmen.
“There are certain freshmen that are more mature beyond their years,” Katz told tomleachky.com. “When my colleagues say ‘How are they going to handle the NCAA Tournament — they’re only freshmen,’ I think because of who they are, that’s not going to matter.”
“I think it is over-analyzed compared to where we were 15 years ago,” Dykes said. “These guys have played so many basketball games in their life with AAU, high school. They have been on so many big stages in front of big crowds. It used to be an issue with freshmen and getting on the big stage and bright lights, can they handle a pressure-packed situation? But that is not going to phase these guys. I am a guy when it comes to experience, that when it comes to experience or talent, I will take talent every time.”
And The Sporting News’ longtime college basketball writer, Mike DeCourcy, says he’s seen a lot of maturing out of Cousins and Wall in particular.
“I think there is still questions about (Cousins’) temperament and there are places where he needs to improve and be on good behavior through the NCAA tournament,” DeCourcy said. “He needs to understand when he gets there that they are not going to take a lot from him in a showcase like that, because they (the officials) all want to get to the Final Four, too, so he is going to have to be mindful of that and if he does something out of bounds, he will be in trouble. In that part of it, I think he has probably gone from a D-minus to a C-plus and on being a hard-playing player, I think he has gone from a D-minus to a B-plus. He might even be an A.
“There has been a lot of evolution which has made Kentucky a better basketball team. There is John Wall, who has become a more composed player. He is not as spectacular as he was in the first month, but I think he is better now. He plays hard for the entire game and not just, ‘OK, we haven’t played well the first 35 minutes, let’s play hard the last five and we will win.’ And that is how the first month went. I think John is more focused now and knows that if you play the full 40 minutes, you don’t have to scramble through the last five”
