Before Kentucky played Louisville, John Calipari stressed that the
important thing for his team to gain from the game was improvement.
Noting that Louisville had edges in location and experience, Calipari
said he could live with a loss if he saw the competitive fight and sense
of urgency that he had been pushing for since the start of the season.Well,
if you think Coach Cal is satisfied with any loss, you don’t know him
very well. But it’s also true that his words as well as his body
language told a story of a coach who liked a lot of what he saw that
day.  And Tim Brando, who called the game for CBS, says the most
significant development for Kentucky may be the maturation of sophomore
point guard Ryan Harrow.”Ryan Harrow just grew up by leaps and
bounds in the Louisville game, playing at a higher level than I had seen
and I had seen (him) at N.C. State,” said Brando, who was working on
the ACC network for several of those Wolfpack games two years ago. “He
had not been a very confident point (guard) and I think understanding
what John needs at the point is going to be essential for that growth.”Harrow
sat out last season at UK after transferring from State but after a
subpar outing in the opener against Maryland, followed by a lengthy
absence stemming from a mysterious illness, there were major question
marks about the Cats’ on-court quarterback.”I think this is a
classic case of Calipari coming up with a conception, a belief that this
can work and then seeing it through to make it work. John is one of
those guys as a coach that he’ll be leaning in a certain direction but
as he’s leaning, he’ll decide, ‘Yeah, I’m right about this.’ And he may
not be right immediately, but he’s going to make sure his point becomes
accurate by the end of it,” Brando said on “The Leach Report” radio show
Monday.At NC State, Brando said “the book” on Harrow was that he did not play with confidence.”From
a coaching standpoint, instilling that confidence and toughness is
right in his (Calipari’s) wheelhouse,” Brando said, noting that he is
seeing a different Harrow than he saw at N.C. State.”Some
Kentucky fans are going to look up in March and they’re going to be
looking back at the season and say, ‘Early in the second half (of the
Louisville game) when the game was going south, and a timeout was called
and Kentucky was down 17, something happened there, an epiphany took
place and Ryan Harrow became a really good player. And from that point
forward, they really did improve and look where they are now,’ ” Brando
predicted. “If there’s one key element to this team, that can be a
difference-maker, that might in fact be it. Ryan was a talented player
but was really never confident at running the point. He could always
score but (running the team) was never his forte.”Now, Harrow
seems to be oozing confidence and his team is feeding off that positive
vibe. And that can only enhance the chemistry of a team that looks good
to Brando already.”It does as though these guys like each other
on the floor. They share the ball well and it’s not about me, it’s about
we,” Brando observed. “And I like that seeing in this team and I think
John does, too.”