Cats Taking Day-by-Day Approach to Chasing Lofty Goals
You’re not likely to make it far into a conversation with a Kentucky fan – if the subject happens to shift from the football team – without hearing speculation about whether this might be the year the Wildcats win their ninth men’s basketball national championship.
They’ll point to the depth of John Calipari’s roster. They’ll cite UK’s combination of experienced and freshman talent.
But if you talk to the players themselves about the same topic? Crickets.
“I don’t think it ever really comes up in the locker room,” Keldon Johnson said at media day on Thursday.
If you’re concerned about the Cats not caring about No. 9, stand down. On the contrary, they care deeply. They just know there are far more immediate tasks at hand.
“I think that we’re all just focused on one game at a time,” Johnson said. “We’re all just focused on being the best team we can be.”
In fact, to say UK is focused on one game at a time might even be overstating it. UK’s first regular-season game isn’t for more than three weeks and, though it will be a hyped matchup with Duke, even that has barely been broached as a topic of conversation in that locker room.
“I think that shows the maturity of the team that we’re not even talking about the first game yet,” Reid Travis said. “I think the biggest thing for us is just to get better every day. Take it day by day, focus on what we need to get better at as a team just knowing that process is going to take care of itself.”
Travis, though this is his first and only season at Kentucky, understands that process better than anyone. This will be his fifth college season after he spent four years at Stanford before electing to come to UK as a graduate transfer this summer. Travis hasn’t yet played in an NCAA Tournament game, but he’s still not allowing himself to look ahead to that possibility.
“If you overlook games and look too far in the future, I feel like that’s when you start overlooking days,” Travis said. “That’s just a snowball effect of bad things to come. I just give credit to everybody on the team that we’ve been able to stay focused on the present.”
Besides, why would the Cats look ahead when they’re enjoying the present so much. That’s especially true for Calipari, who confirmed Thursday exactly how much fun he is having coaching this Kentucky team and explained why that is.
“Well, when you don’t have to coach effort, when you don’t have to coach the enthusiasm, the passion you have to play with, when you don’t have to coach a competitive spirit, fight, go, come on, dive on that, I don’t have to coach that with this team,” Coach Cal said. “So now you know what you’re coaching? Basketball. So now you coach basketball, and I love coaching basketball.”
That will do nothing to dampen enthusiasm among that aforementioned fan base, but there is work to be done.
“We still need a couple guys, and I don’t know who they’re going to be, to be those separators, to be those catalysts,” Calipari said. “Who is going to be that guy? No one knew it would be Shai (Gilgeous-Alexander) last year. No one knew. I didn’t know. And so it develops.”
With Gilgeous-Alexander, it developed based on his work ethic. The good news for Calipari is he has a team full of guys working at a high level – the lights are often at the Joe Craft Center until midnight – and who want to accept that burden. Travis is one of them.
“I think with the experience that I have and the work I put in every day, I’m confident,” Travis said. “I think that’s where it comes from. If you’re doing the right things every day, you know it’s going to click. When the time comes in the game, I feel confident in myself that I can take over in those situations. That’s up to me to just get in here and work every day to perfect the things I’m trying to get better at so when I do get put in those situations I can be somebody that’s relied upon.”
And Travis is far from the only one who feels that way. That’s exactly what UK needs in order to chase that title.
“To be empowered they’ve got to have more than one leader, and those leaders will have to understand if you lead, you’re serving.” Calipari said. “It’s servant leadership. You’re going to be about everyone else. We need someone who’s going to bring us all together and pick everybody up, hold people accountable. Are you willing to hold somebody accountable who’s not doing right in this room? If you’re not, you’re not ready to be empowered.”
