Attention all local Lexington basketball leagues: John Calipari and his men’s basketball team could be coming to a league near you.On Sunday, Calipari told reporters he was looking for a league to put his team in. The only criterion is that they play 20-minute games.”We’re not in the kind of condition we need to be in,” Calipari said. “I told the team after that we can play about 17 minutes of a game and be alright – not great but alright. So I’m out looking for a league that plays 20-minute games thinking that we have a chance.”OK, so Calipari was kidding about joining a new league – based off those preseason rankings, chances are the Cats are going to be A-OK in Division I – but some of the issues he’s seen in practice over the last week have been no joking matter.Calipari said this team still has a long ways to go to get to the level that his teams of the past were at. The first-year head coach isn’t asking that his team be Dec. 15 ready, but he said they do need to round into shape to become Nov. 1 ready, in time for the exhibition game Monday night vs. Campbellsville in Rupp Arena.”If we’re to be what this program wants to be, we have to be vicious defensively, we have to be a two-handed rebound team that goes after every ball, we have to be a team that makes easy, easy plays and then a team that works harder than the opponent,” Calipari said.Conditioning, more or less, is just a minor problem. At this stage in the season, Calipari is trying to alter the mental approach of a team that in reality is largely inexperienced and oblivious to the road that lies ahead.”This thing with this team is going to be more of me teaching of how to win mentally and how to prepare and how to think,” Calipari said. “They’re just so young and they don’t know. You’re teaching everything. How to act in this situation, how to respond in this situation, how to approach practice every day.” For the first time this year, Calipari said he had to get “mean” with them at practice on Friday because of some of the players’ mental approach. “I just kept it real,” Calipari said. “We’re either starting this guy or that guy. If this guy can’t do it because he’s not mature enough or he’s not verbal enough, he’s not starting. … If he can’t get ready for practice, how’s he going to get ready for the start of the game? If it takes him 20 minutes to get ready, he’ll be coming in later in the game. He will not start. … I said, ‘I can tell you what you want to hear or I can be honest with you.’ “And Calipari has been brutally honest with his team of late. They’re good, no doubt, but he wants more. He doesn’t want complacency. Calipari said he has found himself stopping practice more than he’s used to in order to teach. Watching practice Sunday, it was a rarity for more than a minute or two to tick off the clock before Calipari halted everyone with a whistle. (The stoppages have taken away from the Cats’ conditioning, Calipari admitted.)He’s had to be more hands-on with this team because of the lack of discipline and maturity, but Calipari said that’s natural for a team made up of a lot of 18- and 19-year-olds.
To show them his vision of where he wants this team to eventually be, Calipari has been showing the players film of his Memphis teams of the past few years. “Discipline is doing the things you don’t want to do and doing them well so you can do the things you want to do: reach your dreams. That’s discipline,” Calipari said. “You just have to do stuff you don’t feel like doing and then learn to do it well so you can reach your dreams.”Those dreams start Monday night vs. Campbellsville. Whether they’re ready to play a full 40-minute game or not, freshman Daniel Orton said he’s just ready to finally start the season. “I’m just ready to play someone else other than these people to tell you the truth,” Orton said.