UK alum Tom Leach has been the play-by-play “Voice of the Wildcats” for the football Cats for 12 years and 9 year’s 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
Brought to you by:
= = =
ESPN’s Jimmy Dykes saw Kentucky’s first game day shootaround of the season, back in mid-November when the Cats were getting set to open the season against Morehead State. Calipari lamented how poor the practice was and Dykes didn’t see anything that would make him argue with that assessment. But he says the newly number one-ranked Cats have come a long way since then.
“I think they understand how to play team basketball. I saw them the first practice and I don’t think they had any clue about team basketball on the offensive end and the defensive end. I saw them four weeks later and they had glimpses of it. And I saw them two weeks after that and they were really looking like a team on both ends,” Dykes told tomleachky.com. “Defensively, in the exhibition game and first couple of games, John Wall looked uninterested on the defensive end and now John Calipari has taken an elite talent level guy and got him to buy into how hard you have to play defensively. The progress he has made with DeMarcus Cousins is, to me, one of the great coaching jobs this year. To be able to get this guy to embrace being a low post player, because he wasn’t one in high school, and to hustle up and down the floor each time he is in the game is, I think, those two areas have really stood out to me.”
Calipari has said his NBA experience–as a head coach with the Nets and an assistant to Larry Brown in Philadelphia–made him a different and better coach. Dykes says that experience has made Calipari one of the best in the college game at managing groups of talented young players who may leave after a year or two in college.
“I don’t think there is any question. I think he is as good as there is in the college game right now.at doing that. He had to manage ego and talent the last several years at Memphis. He had elite level guys there and I think he has a great way to communicate with those kids. I have been there at practice and have been privileged to sit with him in some team meetings with him and his staff and players and see how he gets his point across to them and not everyone can do it,” said Dykes.
“Not everyone can take that highly talented player; a Wall, Bledsoe, a Patterson and get them to play hard. He does that as good as anyone in the college game right now and it seems easy to do but it ain’t,” he continued.
“I think the whole key in guys that play and are done in one year, a lot of coaches are scared of that. There is no reason to be scared of them as long as you do your background and homework on them. John has never been a guy to bring someone into his program that is a one year player that is going to be a selfish player,” Dykes added. “John is a good guy at figuring out quickly in the recruiting process that if he is going to have a guy for one year, how will he blend with my guys for that one year and there have been some guys in the college game that have not done a good job at that but I think that Cal does a great job in his evaluation with those players that if you are going to come and play for me, you are going to do things the way I want you to do it and he holds them to it. He will be the first to tell you that the worst mistake you can make is to bring in a guy with the one-year agenda and is selfish and can’t get him out of it and he has not had that happen to him. That selfishness is like the flu,” Dyke said, “and that’s why you don’t want it to seep into your team, because when it comes, it can be hard to get rid of.”
Tonight, Kentucky takes the number one ranking out for its first test drive–on the road against South Carolina. Devan Downey is averaging more than 31 points per game in SEC play and Dykes says the best plan in defending him is just to make it hard for him to get his points–because he’s going to get them.
“I think what teams try to do, you are not going to take away everything this kid does so you have to try and take away a few areas. I don’t think you can let him stand up there and bomb away three’s because he is very good. He shoots with deep range, has a lot of confidence and has a green light,” Dykes noted. “He shoots 22, 23 shots a game right now, so I think you have got to really crowd him and take away his threes and can’t let him get clean layups at the rim. Anything in between are difficult shots and you need to make him take as many difficult shots as you can, knowing he is going to make them but at least he is not making three’s and layups on you.”
Dykes says Kentucky will have to be ready to face South Carolina’s most rowdy crowd of the season and the first sellout for the Gamecocks. As for the rest of the SEC race, Dykes believes Vandy is the team that would have the best chance to knock off UK.
