No. 20 Kentucky Faces Another Challenge in No. 7 Kansas
Sometimes, it’s hard to predict how a young, inexperienced team will react in certain situations. Kentucky head coach John Calipari knows this better than anyone. And his team got an early lesson in Sunday’s game on what it can and can’t do when the game is tight at the end.
By the time Calipari and freshman Terrence Clarke met the media on Monday morning, the team had already watched the film of the Richmond game. And it was a good teaching tool for Calipari to use with his young team, especially when it comes to sharing the ball.
“We went from a very unselfish basketball team, I’ve never coached a team that had no assists in the second half,” Calipari said. “You can say we missed shots. We went on the tape and showed them all of the open passes they could have made to get other guys open for shots or threes. If there’s someone in front of you who’s not your man, that means someone’s open. We’ll work on it today.”
The film work and Monday’s practice come ahead of what will be Kentucky’s biggest challenge so far on the young season. The Cats will face Kansas on Tuesday in Indianapolis in the Champions Classic. The Jayhawks are also 1-1 on the season, with the loss coming to top-ranked Gonzaga. Calipari is impressed with how Kansas has played so far.
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| Kentucky vs. Kansas | ||
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Tue., Dec. 1 – 9:30 p.m. ET |
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TV: ESPN |
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| UK | Stats | KU |
| 1-1 | Record | 1-1 |
| 0-0 | Conference Record | 0-0 |
| 72.5 | PPG | 92.0 |
| 60.5 | Opp PPG | 87.0 |
| .458 | FG% | .516 |
| .393 | Opp FG% | .482 |
| 45.5 | RPG | 37.5 |
| .231 | 3PT FG% | .447 |
| .217 | Opp 3PT FG% | .345 |
| 11.5 | APG | 13.5 |
| 6.0 | SPG | 8.0 |
| 4.5 | BPG | 3.5 |
“They’ve got some vets, their post player is tough, they’ve got good three-point shooters,” Calipari said. “I think they’re playing well. They’ve played two good teams, and Gonzaga may be the best team and that was a touch-and-go game. It’s going to be a hard game for us.”
As for his team, Calipari was pleased with how they defended and rebounded in Sunday’s game.
“There’s a positive how we defended, that’s a hard team to guard,” Calipari said. “I told them, if you defend like that and you outrebound a team by 20, I never really heard of a team losing that game. But when you get five assists and 21 turnovers and you don’t create a good three for us, that’s when you lose the game.”
Just two games into the season, and with an entirely new group of players, there are still some things that Calipari and the team need to figure out.
“I never thought our issue would be offensively,” Calipari said. “We still haven’t figured out how exactly we’re going to play. We’ve got good three-point shooters. We’re not going to rely on it. The guys that can shoot them, let it go.”
Another thing that the young Cats are still learning is how to turn momentum when it’s going in the opposite direction.
“The lesson to them is, that’s why you’ve got to play, you’ve got to know how to stop the bleeding,” Calipari said. “I’ve got to teach them how to play winning basketball. We’ve got good players, but they’re not ready to play winning basketball the way they’re playing right now.”
Calipari does not want his team to overthink the game. Instead, they should do the easy things and that will make the team better.
“We tried to make everything hard,” Calipari said. “I’ve got to make a play here. We’ve got some work to do offensively. We did some good stuff, but not enough. We didn’t create a good shot for a teammate.”
Freshman guard Terrence Clarke saw things on film that he knows can be fixed.
“Everybody’s kind of motivated to come back and bounce back from the loss that we took,” Clarke said. “After going over film, there’s a lot of things we can change.”
Calipari hopes that when his players see a positive behavior, they will replicate it.
“When you’ve got one or two guys doing it, it leads to four, five, six guys doing it,” Calipari said. “Spacing was bad, my fault. We didn’t screen, we didn’t run the guy into the screen, a lot of little things that cost you a game.”
If the Cats can take the lessons learned on Sunday, both during the game and from watching the tape, there should be a marked offensive improvement. Against a tough opponent like Kansas, that will be mandatory.
New-Look Champions Classic will Offer Same Stiff Competition
The more things change — ahem, 2020 — the more they stay the same.
The Champions Classic wasn’t immune to all the changes 2020 has had in store for everyone. Kentucky’s game vs. Kansas was originally scheduled for the United Center in Chicago, was moved to ESPN’s Wide World of Sports in Orlando over the summer, and then, just weeks ago, changed to Bankers Life Fieldhouse in Indianapolis without fans in attendance. The other two teams, Duke and Michigan State, will play earlier Tuesday night at Duke.
Having said all that, the one consistent in the Champions Classic: The competition is always among the best of any event in college basketball.
That won’t be any different this season against the Jayhawks. Despite losing four of their top five scorers from a season ago, one in which Kansas had its sights set on competing for a national title, the Jayhawks are still expected to be among the nation’s best teams and in the thick of yet another Big 12 title race.
Guard Ochai Agbaji is the leading returner from a season ago and has lived up to his increased responsibilities early in the season with a 17.5 scoring average, but it’s sophomore guard Christian Braun who has stepped up the most so far. He’s averaging a team-best 19.0 points and 5.5 rebounds per game and is shooting 68.4% from the field with seven 3-pointers. Kansas is 1-1 on the season but took its lone loss to the top-ranked team in the country, Gonzaga.
UK owns a 5-4 record in the Champions Classic after defeating Michigan State a season ago. Duke leads the four-team field with a 6-3 mark, followed by Kentucky at 5-4, Kansas at 4-5 and Michigan State at 3-6.
The Wildcats are 2-1 vs. the Jayhawks in the Champions Classic matchups, although Kansas won the last meeting in the event, 65-61, at the United Center in Chicago in November 2017.
Kentucky won the last overall meeting in the series vs. Kansas, defeating the Jayhawks 71-63 in Rupp Arena in the SEC/Big 12 Challenge in January 2019. That snapped a three-game skid. UK leads the overall series 23-9 and 8-2 at neutral sites.
This will be the third time the Champions Classic has been held at Bankers Life Fieldhouse in Indianapolis. The previous two games were polar opposites. The Wildcats pummeled Kansas in an unforgettable 72-40 win in November 2014 that propelled Kentucky to a 38-0 start to the 2014-15 season. However, the last time there, in November 2018, resulted in a shocking 118-84 UK loss at the hands of Duke, the worst loss in John Calipari’s career. Chances are, with as talented as the two teams are, Tuesday’s game won’t repeat the script.
Big-Game Cal, Cats
John Calipari’s teams aren’t just good against the best teams in the country, they’re great. Not only does Kentucky own a 63-33 record (.655) vs. Associated Press Top 25 teams under John Calipari, UK is 7-4 when both teams are ranked in the AP top five.
All-time, Calipari is 13-8 when both teams are ranked in the AP top five. When both teams are ranked in the AP Top 25, Calipari’s all-time record is 86-56, including a 55-29 mark at Kentucky. When both are ranked in the top 10 he has a 27-19 record, including 16-12 at UK.
Kentucky answered the bell of big-time showdowns again in 2019-20. UK was 4-2 vs. AP Top 25 teams, including 2-1 vs. top-five teams at the time.
By defeating top-ranked Michigan State to start the 2019-20 season, UK knocked off the No. 1 team in consecutive seasons for the first time in school history. Kentucky downed Tennessee on Feb. 19, 2019. With the win over MSU to begin 2019-20, the Wildcats have nine victories over the No. 1 team in 25 tries in program history.
Calipari improved to 6-4 vs. the No. 1 team in his career with the win vs. Michigan State, including 3-2 at Kentucky. According to ESPN, Calipari is the only coach with a winning (.600) percentage against No. 1 ranked teams with a minimum of 10 games faced against the No. 1.
Young Wildcats Upset by Senior-Laden Richmond
As talented as the Kentucky Wildcats are, John Calipari wondered how his team would respond against an experienced and talented team of veterans.
Turns out they’ve still got a lot of growing up to do.
Led by four seniors in the starting lineup (Kentucky started four freshmen), Richmond earned its first road victory over an Associated Press top-10 team in program history with a 76-64 win on Sunday night at Rupp Arena in the Bluegrass Showcase. The Spiders had been 0-25 against AP top-10 teams and trailed 36-30 just after halftime.
But this was no average mid-major team. Richmond entered the season just outside both major polls, is a favorite to win the Atlantic 10 and will almost surely be an NCAA Tournament team this season.
Richmond dealt two blows in the second half that a young and inexperienced UK team simply didn’t know how to respond to. First was a 9-0 burst to take a 39-30 lead and then a 7-0 stretch late in the game dealt the Wildcats a 72-56 hole, essentially a knockout blow.
It was just the 12th loss in Rupp Arena in 196 games under John Calipari, although this one tied for the largest defeat of the Calipari era. Texas A&M also beat Kentucky by 12 in Rupp Arena on Jan. 12, 2013.
Brandon Boston Jr. (20 points, 10 rebounds) and Olivier Sarr (17 points and 11 rebounds) both recorded double-doubles, Isaiah Jackson grabbed 14 rebounds despite a gimpy ankle and the Wildcats outrebounded the Spiders by a whopping 23 (according to UK Athletics historian consultant Corey Price, it was the first time a Kentucky team has lost with a positive rebounding margin of 23 or more since Feb. 9, 1976), but a deeper dive into the stats reveal how Kentucky did all that and still lost:
• UK dished out five assists, tied for the lowest mark of the Calipari era, and zero in the second half
• The Wildcats got to the free-throw line plenty — 33 times to be exact — but only made 20 of the opportunities (60.6%)
• Kentucky shot just 36.1% overall
• UK turned the ball over 21 times, among the highest marks of the Calipari era and the most since 22 mishaps in a win vs. ETSU on Nov. 17, 2017
• And perhaps most notably, zero 3-pointers in 10 attempts. After making a 3-pointer in a then-NCAA record 1,047 straight games leading up to the 2018 NCAA Tournament, UK has now gone 0 for the game twice in the last 73 games
Bounce Back
Kentucky doesn’t lose often during the John Calipari era, but when the Wildcats do, they almost always bounce back. UK is 55-13 under Calipari following a loss (record does not count end-of-season losses).
The Wildcats did it once last season, losing two straight in Las Vegas, but UK bounced back in a big way by closing the regular season with wins in 17 of its final 20 games, including the Southeastern Conference regular-season championship.
Kentucky has only lost more than two games once under Calipari losing four straight during the 2017-18 season. Previously, the last time UK lost four games in a row was in February 2009, when the Wildcats dropped four straight games to end the regular season. It was the first time Calipari had lost four straight since the end of the 2004-05 season at Memphis.
UK has never lost back-to-back home games under Calipari.
