UK Zeroing in on Defense Preparing for Monmouth
John Calipari didn’t mince words after Kentucky’s last game.
In order for the Wildcats to become the kind of team they want to be, it’s non-negotiable: The defense must improve.
Over the last five days, Coach Cal has refined his focus.
“I’ve gotta understand that defensively we’ve just got to hold them more accountable every time out and hope we’re better game to game and hope they start taking more pride in it,” Calipari said. “We got good kids; it’s just they’ve never – the discipline of a possession of you personally staying and then if one guy breaks down the whole defense breaks down. It takes five guys being disciplined at one time.”
That’s a tough ask considering one inherent challenge this UK team has: youth.
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| Kentucky vs. Monmouth | ||
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Fri., Nov. 28 – 8:30 p.m. ET |
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| Coverage | ||
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TV: SEC Network |
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| UK | 2018-19 Stats | MU |
| 84.5 | PPG | 60.6 |
| 75.5 | Opp PPG | 76.0 |
| .487 | FG% | .378 |
| .458 | Opp FG% | .455 |
| 41.2 | RPG | 31.9 |
| .330 | 3PT FG% | .252 |
| .434 | Opp 3PT FG% | .348 |
| .744 | FT% | .755 |
| 14.3 | APG | 10.4 |
| 6.0 | SPG | 7.4 |
| 5.5 | BPG | 2.7 |
“Guess what young players never have?” Calipari said. “Discipline.”
If you’re thinking that means the task facing the No. 10/9 Cats is impossible, think again. It just means that discipline has to start with Coach Cal.
“Guess what I have to have personally?” Calipari said. “Stay with the process. Have discipline. Don’t lose your mind. Don’t get frustrated. These guys gotta know I’m for them, and if they ever get to where they don’t think I’m for them and that’s their perception then I’m wrong.”
Calipari isn’t going to let that happen. One way he’s doing that is by willfully acting as a lightning rod for any outside criticism.
“I always say, don’t get mad at these kids,” Calipari said. “They’ve made a commitment to come here and play for us and play here in the hardest place it is to play basketball. … And they chose to come here, and that’s what I tell the fans: Don’t get on these kids. If you want to be mad, be mad at me. They’re going to do what I ask them to do or what I accept that they’re doing.”
So, what Calipari is asking of his team as the Cats prepare to host Monmouth (0-7) Wednesday at 8:30 p.m. is simple.
“The standard defensively (is) let’s just be better than yesterday,” Calipari said. “Then let’s look at the last game and let’s get better.”
With a defense allowing more than a point per possession and ranking fourth worst in Division I in 3-point percentage, there’s plenty of room for improvement. That’s both a challenge and an opportunity.
“We don’t stay in a stance, we don’t bounce, we don’t anticipate and we don’t play with hands like we should because of our length,” Calipari said. “We’ve been working on it. It’s hard for us to stay in front of people because we come up out of a stance. We’re never ready to go. We’re never anticipating what the guy is doing and we’re never helping the helper. All stuff that it just takes time.”
On the flipside, Calipari is actually quite pleased with the state of Kentucky’s offense. The Cats, even though they have shot far worse than Coach Cal believes they eventually will, are scoring more than 1.15 points per possession. They are first in the nation in offensive-rebounding rate and get to the free-throw line at the fifth best rate, according to kenpom.com.
“Here’s what I said to them: We’re doing enough offensively and we’re still not clicking perfectly, but offensive rebounds, free-throw line, efficiencies, we’re throwing between 275, 300 passes a game, we’re getting guys to move the ball,” Calipari said. “We’re doing a lot of good stuff.”
That brings it back to defense.
“We’re definitely going towards March,” PJ Washington said. “For right now, we just need to keep the ball in front of us and not people get to the lane as easy as they are right now because that’s creating open 3s for everybody and they’re making them right now.”
Monmouth will be the latest team to try to take advantage of UK’s defensive lapses. Their winless record might suggest the Hawks won’t be able to, but Coach Cal knows better.
“I’ve watched enough tape,” Calipari said. “They play fast. They play around a post player. I’ll be honest though, I think King (Rice) does an unbelievable job. But, I’m not worried about them. I know they can beat us. If we don’t guard, anybody can beat us. So, this comes down to let’s really guard.”
Johnson’s 27 Points Leads UK to Fifth Straight Win
Keldon Johnson had a big night for No. 10 Kentucky but was more concerned about the bottom line. Johnson scored a career-high 27 points to lead the Wildcats to a 77-62 win over Tennessee State on Friday night.
“It felt pretty good, but the main thing, we got the win,” Johnson said. “I was playing aggressively and just kept attacking (the basket) and it eventually it opened up.”
The Wildcats finished 4-0 in the Ohio Valley Hardwood Showcase and won their fifth straight since a season-opening loss to Duke. Kentucky concluded a span of three games in six days by notching its 48th consecutive victory over a nonconference opponent at home.
Six games into the season, Calipari said the Wildcats are a “ways away” from becoming a dominant team, especially on defense.
Johnson scored 20 points in the second half as the Wildcats pulled away. Johnson made 13 of 18 free throws and finished with seven rebounds. Reid Travis added 13 points and nine rebounds.
Donte Fitzpatrick-Dorsey led the Tigers (2-4) with 18 points, followed by Emmanuel Egbuta with 13 and Kamar McKnight with 10.
Kentucky missed its first eight 3-point attempts before Immanuel Quickley and Tyler Herro connected on back-to-back 3s to give the Wildcats a 15-14 lead. That sparked an 11-0 run.
Kentucky continued to struggle from the field in the first half and made just 9 of 27 shots. The Wildcats made 16 free throws on 20 attempts to build a 35-27 lead at the break. Only one Kentucky player — Herro — made more than one field-goal attempt.
Overall, Kentucky made 27 of 41 free throws.
The Wildcats had surrendered 29 3-pointers in their two previous games but limited the Tigers to just six from long range. The Wildcats, who have outrebounded their opponents by an average of 18.8 per game, dominated the glass, 37-28.
• Kentucky shot its second-worst field-goal percentage of the season (.442), ahead of only its .441 percentage vs. Duke to open the season.
• UK got to the line a season-high 41 times. It’s the most trips to the line since taking 41 trips against LSU in the SEC Tournament on March 14, 2014. UK shot a season-low 65.9 percent from the charity stripe, which snapped a stretch of four straight games above .700.
• UK is now 228-38 under John Calipari against unranked competition.
• Kentucky is now 8-5 as the AP No. 10-ranked team under Calipari.
• UK improved to 238-5 (.979) under Calipari when leading by at least 10 points at any point in the game.
• Kentucky limited the Tigers to 62 points. UK is 155-7 (.957) when limiting opponents to 63 points or fewer during Calipari’s tutelage.
• UK forced a season-high three shot-clock violations.
• Johnson scored a UK season-high 27 points. He made 13 free throws which is the most since De’Aaron Fox also had 13 in the NCAA Tournament victory over UCLA in 2017. It’s the tied for the second most in a single game under Calipari’s direction at UK.
Familiar Foe in Monmouth
Kentucky will play host to Monmouth on Wednesday. It will mark the second consecutive season the two teams will match up.
UK downed the Hawks 93-76 a season ago at Madison Square Garden as a part of the CITI Hoops Classic. PJ Washington had 20 points and a career-high four blocked shots, while classmate Nick Richards added 10 playing close to nearby Elizabeth, New Jersey, where he spent his high school career.
Kentucky forced the Hawks into 15 turnovers and limited Monmouth to just 37.1 percent from teh field and 34.5 percent from 3-point range.
Keldon Johnson Named SEC Freshman of the Week
After leading the Kentucky men’s basketball team to a pair of victories last week, including a career-high 27-point performance against Tennessee State, freshman Keldon Johnson was recognized as the Southeastern Conference’s Freshman of the Week on Monday.
Johnson led the Wildcats in scoring at 20.0 points per game and also chipped in with 7.0 rebounds in wins over Winthrop and Tennessee State. Johnson was second on the team for the week with 14 rebounds.
The 27 points against the Tigers are the most any UK player has scored this season. Johnson got to the total behind 7-of-15 shooting from the floor and sinking 13 free throws. The 13 free throws tied for the second most of any John Calipari-coached player at UK and the most since De’Aaron Fox made the same number against UCLA in the NCAA Tournament in 2017.
The honor is the first of the season for Johnson and the first of the season for Kentucky. Kentucky has won more weekly SEC honors (90) than any other school during the Calipari era, including 72 SEC Freshman of the Week honors and 18 SEC Player of the Week awards.
Opponents Burning UK from Deep
John Calipari-coached teams are typically among the best in the country at defending the 3-point shot.
Dating back to 2008-09 (the first season the NCAA has 3-point field-goal percentage defense statistics readily available), Calipari’s last 10 teams (including his 2008-09 Memphis squad) have ranked in the top 100 in all but one season in 3-point field-goal percentage defense. Three of those have ranked in the top 10 and not a single team allowed opponents to shoot better than 32.6 percent from behind the arc.
As a matter of fact, if one factors in all of Calipari’s teams at UK, Memphis and UMass, only two teams have ever allowed the opposition to shoot better than 35.0 percent for a season and 14 of his prior 26 teams limited the opposition to 32.0 percent or less.
It’s been a different story this season.
Punctuated by VMI’s historic 3-point display last week, a performance that included 19 3-pointers — the most ever by a Kentucky opponent — and 10 by Bubba Parham, opponents are making 43.4 percent of their shots against UK and making 10.3 3-point field goals per game. Kentucky’s .434 3-point field-goal percentage defense ranks 346th in the country and its opponents’ .417 3-point scoring percentage is 336th in the country, according to KenPom.com.
Winthrop followed the historic VMI performance with 13-pointers of its own, the third time in five games the opponent had made 12 or more from behind the arc. Tennessee State was limited to six treys, the second-lowest total on the year for a UK opponent.
In other words, it doesn’t just seem like Kentucky’s foes are making more perimeter shots than they normally do; they are.
The question Calipari and his staff have tried to figure out in recent days with the team is why? Outside the need to improve on defense, perhaps there are some other reasons.
First, it’s early in the season. Six games isn’t a large sample size, and if history tells us anything, the numbers will return to the median. If no other Calipari team has allowed opponents to shoot better than 32.6 percent from behind the arc, chances are that current number isn’t going to sustain.
The other could be the opponents. All six of Kentucky’s opponents have been 3-point-shooting-happy teams.
All six opponents UK has faced ranked in the top 100 in both 3-point field goals made per game and in 3-point field goal percentage. Sometimes a good offense just beats a good defense, and though Calipari would be the first to tell you the defense needs to get significantly better, part of the early-season perimeter struggles on defense could just be buzzard’s luck in scheduling good 3-point shooting teams.
Kentucky does appear to be getting a break with Wednesday’s opponent in Monmouth. The Hawks currently rank 342nd in the country in both 3-point field goals per game (4.7) and in 3-point field-goal percentage (.246).
