March Madness gets all the attention, but April is the most important month on the Kentucky basketball calendar.For starters, UK has played into April in three of the last four seasons, twice advancing to the national championship game and once winning the whole thing. To cap it off, April is when underclassmen make their NBA Draft decisions.The early-entry deadline has become a celebration of sorts at UK, a time for fans to look back on a successful season and wish the best to the players who made it happen as they move on to the next level.This year, April went a little differently.A week after the Wildcats came up a win shy of a title, Willie Cauley-Stein surprised everyone – including his coach – and announced he would return for his junior season. Four days later, Marcus Lee followed suit. The next week, Dakari Johnson, Alex Poythress and the Harrison twins all decided they would come back, too.That customary April celebration quickly turned into anticipation for the season to come. John Calipari, meanwhile, knew his job had changed.”Did we plan on five guys leaving after our first year? No.” Calipari said. “So all of a sudden it changed the whole direction of the program. Now all of a sudden we had guys come back that I thought would never come back. Well, now we’ve got to make it work.”Sharing in Coach Cal’s surprise were Trey Lyles, Karl-Anthony Towns, Devin Booker and Tyler Ulis, the four members of UK’s latest highly rated recruiting class. “I was surprised at first because I definitely thought a lot of people were gone,” Booker said in a preseason interview in August. “But I’m glad that they did come back and that was their decision ultimately and I’m here to support them and it’s the best for us now. We are all competing and all getting better.”Just like UK fans, the four newcomers watched from a distance as six players elected to return and address some unfinished business.”When all the guys decided to come back, I was happy because all that’s going to do for us young guys is help us out because we’ve got experience now,” Lyles said. “Them being able to talk to us about going to the championship and the fans and how Coach Cal is and how everything else is going to be, it’s just really good experience and all it’s going to do is just help us.”Past Calipari classes have borne the full weight of inevitable preseason expectations at UK. John Wall, Eric Bledsoe and DeMarcus Cousins knew they would have to shoulder a heavy load for the 2009-10 team to succeed. The same was true for the likes of Brandon Knight, Anthony Davis, Nerlens Noel and Julius Randle each of the next four seasons.For this group, the pressure is a little less intense.”They’re probably able to play looser because they know it’s not going to be on them. It’s pretty good to know that–how about five freshmen, anybody returning had a great experience in the NIT at Robert Morris?” Calipari said, revisiting the challenge last year’s freshmen faced. “Now all of a sudden you’ve got a team full of guys that played in the championship game and now you’re coming back and watching and learning. If you can compete with them, you start building your own confidence. This guy, I can compete with this guy. It’s a good thing.”Brian Long – who is watching a freshman class make the transition to college for the fourth time – agrees.”I think it helps the team and the freshmen,” Long said. “You don’t have so much of a workload on your back coming in. You can kind – I don’t want to say ease into it – but you can kind of feel into it and learn from the guys who came back and hopefully get a good feel right away and then just take off and understand your role better.”After what happened last season, that probably sounds good to Andrew Harrison. The point guard, though he didn’t arrive on campus until August, had no choice but to step into a starting role on day one. When things didn’t go according to plan, he was subject to scrutiny, unfair as that might have been.A year later, he wants his freshman successors to have a different experience.”I feel like they’re playing pressure free,” Andrew Harrison said. “I want to make sure they feel that way all the time. I feel like it’s fun. They just fill in.”Filling in is something the four newcomers appear poised to do quite effectively. With the six players who bypassed the NBA Draft and fellow returnees Dominique Hawkins and Derek Willis, UK’s roster had few holes on paper. The four freshmen, at least on paper, seem to address those still left.

Start with Booker, the 6-foot-6 guard from Grand Rapids, Mich. James Young’s departure took away the player who hit the most 3-pointers on a team that struggled at times to hit from the outside, at least prior to NCAA Tournament play. The Cats needed a shooter capable of stretching the floor and Booker, who averaged 30.9 points for Moss Point in Mississippi as a senior and once scored 54 points in a game as a sophomore, fits the bill.Booker started all six games of the Big Blue Bahamas tour in August alongside the Harrison twins in the backcourt. He shot just 11 of 32 (34.4 percent) from the field – though he did hit 6 of 14 (42.9 percent) from 3-point range – but that’s not much cause for concern for the consensus top-30 player.”It wasn’t a great look,” Booker said. “I couldn’t make a shot, but overall it was a great time. Shooters go through slumps, but I have confidence in my jumper so that is the least of my worries.”For all the talk about his shooting stroke, be careful not to cast Booker as a one-dimensional player. Booker – the son of Melvin Booker, former Big Eight Player of the Year at Missouri and longtime professional – is what Calipari often calls a “Basketball Benny” in spite of the way he played in the Bahamas.”He’s a basketball player,” Calipari said. “He settled a little bit too much for jumpers. He didn’t dominate as much as he could have but he was trying to feel it out.”Towns, on the other hand, had plenty of dominant moments. The Piscataway, N.J., native and Gatorade High School Player of the Year averaged 11 points and 6.5 rebounds in the Bahamas, both second on the team. He flashed all facets of a diverse skillset that already has the 6-11 forward in the top five on most 2015 draft boards. He’s not the same kind of athlete as Willie Cauley-Stein or the kind of imposing physical presence as Dakari Johnson, but Towns brings a new dimension with his length, touch around the basket and shooting stroke that extends past the 3-point line.Now that Cauley-Stein has returned from injury, Towns is alternating between battling two very different big men in practice. Already, he’s found how beneficial that competition can be.”Come on, look who we have,” Towns said. “Every day I know going in the gym in every practice we’re going to get better. No matter what happens, we’re going to get better and we’re going to compete. And that’s the best thing. It makes the games so much easier and it makes our skills so much better.”

Ulis is in a similar situation.The 5-9 point guard goes toe to toe every day with Andrew Harrison, a player with nine inches, more than 50 pounds and 40 games of college experience on him. It’s a challenge he hasn’t shied away from.”I just try in practice to help him by pressuring the ball, picking him up full court being a pest so he can get used to playing with smaller guards,” Ulis said.Ulis’ defensive pest abilities were on display in the Bahamas, where he had eight steals – including a game-clinching swipe and layup in one of the games – and many more forced turnovers. Seemingly the only thing that slowed him down were a couple hard screens his teammates failed to call out, but even those never kept him down for more than a moment. “As a small guard, I have to get up under people,” Ulis said, “force people to handle the ball, pressure them, make quick decisions and just try to use my size to my advantage.”As well as the Harrison twins played in the postseason last year, on-ball pressure was never their forte. Ulis also gives UK a talented second option at point guard after Coach Cal mostly used wing players like Aaron Harrison and Doron Lamb in spot backup duty in recent years.While Ulis was busy establishing himself as a fan favorite in the Bahamas, Lyles was forced to sit as he recovered from a foot injury. Lyles was a consensus five-star prospect coming out of Indianapolis, but he is a relative unknown to fans because he missed the preseason tour.When he does make his debut, Lyles won’t look to make an impression with highlight-reel plays. Asked which player he models his game after, the 6-10 Lyles named none other than Tim Duncan.”Just fundamentally sound,” Lyles said, describing his game. “Play hard. Score. Rebound. Team-first player. I just do whatever the coach wants me to do.”Now that he is back from injury and practicing with the team, it remains to be seen what exactly will be asked of him. Lyles and Cauley-Stein’s absence left 10 healthy scholarship players for Coach Cal’s two platoons in the Bahamas, and the system worked well enough that the experiment seems likely to at least last into early in the regular season.”It’s never been done before where the players have benefited,” Calipari said. “It’s been done where the program’s benefited and the coaches benefited, but it’s never been done before where players benefited. That’s the challenge that we’ll have. I think that if you can get two groups that are balanced yet good enough, we can do it. We have some time. We have to see.”The four freshmen, facing a different kind of challenge than any Calipari recruiting class at Kentucky, are ready to fit in however they’re asked.”I think that we’re just prepared to do whatever Coach Cal wants from us,” Lyles said. “If he wants us to take over, then we gotta do it or we gotta step behind. If he wants us to fill in the blank spots, then that’s what we’ll do.”