Cal Already Pushing Limits on Eve of Season Opener
Spend a few minutes in a Kentucky practice and it’s clear: John Calipari is turning up the heat on his latest group of Wildcats.
“This is as hard as I’ve been on a team since I’ve been here, I would say,” Coach Cal said. “Both stretching them out and then being direct and specific on what we’re looking for and what I’ve accepted.”
With the season set to start Friday for the No. 5/4 Wildcats when they play host to Utah Valley at 7 p.m., Calipari isn’t waiting for the season’s first loss to develop a sense of urgency. He’s got it now, and his team is feeling the effects.
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| Kentucky vs. Utah Valley | ||
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Fri., Nov. 10 – 7 p.m. ET |
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TV: SEC Network |
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| UK | 2016-17 Team Stats | UVU |
| 32-6 | Record | 17-17 |
| 16-2 | Conference Record | 6-8 |
| 84.9 | PPG | 76.9 |
| 71.5 | Opp PPG | 72.9 |
| .473 | FG% | .437 |
| .424 | Opp FG% | .415 |
| 39.8 | RPG | 39.7 |
| .353 | 3PT FG% | .320 |
| .424 | Opp 3PT FG% | .316 |
| .703 | FT% | .707 |
| 15.4 | APG | 15.6 |
| 6.0 | SPG | 6.4 |
| 5.3 | BPG | 3.6 |
Before every drill, Calipari has been known of late to have players run 17s – running up and down the floor 17 times in 60 seconds. He’s also put lids on rims so no shots will go in and every one has to be rebounded.
“It was crazy,” Kevin Knox and Quade Green both said independently.
Calipari’s goal in those “crazy” practices is to teach his players to push themselves and to keep going when exhaustion hits. That’s what he’s been getting at ever since there was a cramp epidemic at the Blue-White Game.
“Fatigue is not just physical fatigue,” Calipari said. “You think about these kids. It’s a high school team plus six months. Now all of a sudden they’re in front of 25,000 people. The anxiety prior to the game. The anxiety before the game you do a shoot-around. The fatigue, they’re just used to when I feel this way, let go. That’s what we’re trying to tell them they’ve got to fight through.”
Only recently has Calipari eased off the throttle a little bit.
“No one gets off the court,” Calipari said. “No one stops. Only the last couple days have I started going four-minute segments, where we scrimmage four minutes, take a minute and 30 seconds, scrimmage four minutes. Because that’s what the game is like. Prior to that we would just go until I decided we stop.”
Calipari isn’t doing all this as a means of punishment, not in the slightest. He has, in his own words, “a great group of kids.” It just so happens that his great group of kids is about to face the gauntlet that is a Kentucky basketball season, starting with Friday’s matchup with an experienced Utah Valley team coached by Mark Pope – a member of UK’s 1996 national championship squad.
“I don’t care where they’re from, where we’re from, this is not going to be easy for these guys,” Calipari said. “I’m happy on the trajectory of the team. It’s just that we are where we are.”
Combine the state of UK’s team, what with its eight freshman, and a challenging early-season schedule beginning with three games in five days, and it seems likely that trajectory will suffer a dip or two along the way.
“They’re going to have to get hit in the mouth a few times, then you start realizing,” Calipari said. “Or, the other side of it is, what happens when you’re us, the other teams play as well as they can play and they play with more energy, they’re more focused and they execute better because they’re playing against Kentucky, in Rupp Arena or anywhere. That means it puts even more pressure on you to do and play the way you have to play.”
Calipari has faced that pressure for going on nine years now. Though most of his players never have, Calipari also has led newcomers through that. He remembers the end results of each of those seasons more than the growing pains, but if he focuses he can recall from experience what he’s about to go through.
“It’s hard when you’re my age, you don’t remember back to other teams and how they were early,” Calipari said. “You don’t remember 2009 being down 19 to Miami of Florida–no, Miami of Ohio. It looked like you were going to win and it took a buzzer beater by John Wall to win the game. You forget all those. You just think you won all these games. This is going to be a process.”
UK Dominant in Final Preseason Tune-Up
Kentucky shot a blistering 61.8 percent to breeze past in-state foe Centre College and grab a 106-63 win in front of 20,378 fans in Rupp Arena in its final exhibition of the year. Wenyen Gabriel led all scorers with 20 points while Quade Green (18), Nick Richards (17), Kevin Knox (15) and PJ Washington (10) rounded out UK’s double-figure scorers.
Green buried a 3-pointer 10 seconds into the game and the rout appeared on, but the visitors gamely chipped into an early 15-point lead for the Cats to make it 28-22. But over the final eight minutes of the first half, UK reeled off a dominating 24-2 run to take firm control.
Kentucky’s edge was most overwhelming on the glass, an area in which the Cats lacked in their last exhibition. After Morehead State outrebounded UK 30-25 on Oct. 30, UK reversed that and then some, taking advantage of its significant size advantage and holding a 52-17 edge on the glass. In fact, Kentucky matched its rebounding total from its previous effort with 1:58 left in the first half.
The board work came from all over, with six players wrangling in at least four rebounds. Knox, though he got off to a slow offensive start in scoring only two first-half points, led the way with 11 boards – seven coming before the break. He had only eight combined rebounds in UK’s first two exhibitions before registering a double-double against Centre.
John Calipari toyed with a different starting lineup for a third straight game. Knox and Washington were the only two Wildcats to start all three exhibitions, an example of Calipari’s preseason experimentation. Another such example was the zone defense he deployed for a long second-half stretch.
• The Wildcats were 8 of 14 from behind the 3-point line, a 57.1-percent clip
• Richards was a perfect 5 for 5 from the floor with six rebounds. He scored in double figures in two of the three exhibition games
• Seven Wildcats averaged double-figure scoring in the three exhibitions, led by Knox at 19.3 points per game in addition to 6.3 rebounds a game
• Green was arguably Kentucky’s most consistent player in the three exhibitions. He averaged 15.7 points and 5.7 assists while shooting 69.6 percent from the floor and a team-best 63.6 percent from behind the 3-point line
• UK outscored its three exhibition foes by an average of 36.7 points per game. The Wildcats averaged 100.3 points on 57.1-percent shooting
Pope Comes Home
Kentucky fans will see a familiar face roaming the sidelines in front of the Utah Valley bench on Friday.
Mark Pope, who helped the Wildcats to the 1996 national championship, will return to Rupp Arena as head coach of the Wolverines. After sitting out the 1993-94 season due to NCAA transfer rules, Pope helped UK to Southeastern Conference regular-season championships in 1995 and 1996.
An All-SEC Tournament Team member in 1995, Pope scored 546 career points in 69 games for Kentucky, including four points and three rebounds in the 1996 national title game. Pope also earned Academic All-SEC honors in 1995.
He graduated from UK in 1996 and was selected 52nd overall in the second round of the 1996 NBA Draft. He played professionally until 2005.
Diallo, Knox Tabbed to Oscar Robertson Trophy Watch List
Although just freshmen, Kentucky men’s basketball players Hamidou Diallo and Kevin Knox are two of 32 players on the preseason watch list for the Oscar Robertson Trophy, presented annually by the U.S. Basketball Writers Association to the national player of the year.
UK is one of just three schools (Duke, Arizona) on the preseason watch list with multiple players and one of just two schools (Duke) with multiple freshmen. All told, nine of the 32 preseason candidates are freshmen.
Named after Naismith Memorial Basketball Hall of Famer Oscar Robertson, this year’s award will be presented at the Final Four in San Antonio.
Knox led the Wildcats in scoring in the exhibition season with a 19.3 average in addition to 6.3 boards per game. Diallo averaged 14.7 points per game.
The Wildcats’ Anthony Davis won the award in 2012 as he led Kentucky to the national championship. He is the only Wildcat to win the award.
Kentucky Picked to Win 49th SEC Title
The Kentucky men’s basketball program finds itself in familiar territory under the direction of ninth-year head coach John Calipari. A select panel of media voted the Wildcats to once again win the Southeastern Conference championship. Should Kentucky achieve that standard, it would mark the sixth regular-season title under Calipari and the program’s 49th overall.
It’s the 13th time since the 1998-99 season the Wildcats are the overall preseason favorite. UK was picked to win the title a season ago and did not disappoint. Calipari has directed his teams to regular-season SEC crowns in 2010, 2012, 2015, 2016 and 2017.
Each school selected media members that cover their team and additional media from across the nation were selected by the conference office to comprise the voting panel. Points were compiled on a 14-13-12-11-10-9-8-7-6-5-4-3-2-1 basis. Each media member also voted for two All-SEC teams.
