John Calipari committed to players who are playing best, showing effort

As Kentucky heads into the home stretch and looks to close out the 2023-24 campaign with a strong finish ahead of the NCAA Tournament, the Wildcats are getting healthier.

And more competent.

Coach John Calipari is pleased with where his squad is at, though he does admit the recent developments on the team with some new players stepping up has created a logjam of players vying for minutes. And he’s going to play guys based on merit.

“Yeah, that means some guys aren’t going to play as much,” John Calipari said after a big win over Vanderbilt. “I mean Jordan (Burks) played better than… now does that mean he should be in there? ‘No, because I like the other kid more.’ What? I’m just watching the game and saying, hey, I’m playing the guys that really want to do this. In another week or two we’re going to have 11 guys. We’re going to have 11 guys, and they all can play. So I’d rather have that than four guys.”

While Kentucky managed to top lowly Vanderbilt on Tuesday night, the Wildcats had lost three of four games before that. So there was some needed jostling when it came to playing time.

Calipari appears to be honing on on the right guys.

“I just told them, I’m going to have to play different people, and I really don’t care who you are and how many baskets you score, because we’re not winning just trying to outscore people,” he said. “We proved that the game before. Georgia the first half, why isn’t that us? OK, because I choose not to be that. OK, then you’re going to sit on the bench.”

The reality is that as players fight for playing time, they’re also dealing with a lot of outside noise.

Calipari has done his best to counsel guys to ignore that outside noise, but that’s much easier said than done. Especially at this time of the season.

“I said I’ve done this a long, long time. The ups and downs of this, it is what it is,” John Calipari said. “It’s just at Kentucky the ups are don’t sleep for two days and the downs are I’m going to kill everybody. Everybody needs to leave. I mean that’s what it is.

“But if you’re going to coach at Kentucky or play at Kentucky you better deal with it, because it’s not changing. And I imagine it’s been that way for 50 years. Tom Leach said Defcon 1 or Defcon 5, there’s nothing in between. That’s what it is.”

Calipari wants his guys ignoring that and focusing on what’s important.

“It doesn’t phase me because I’m not listening or looking,” he said. “I don’t do social media other than put stuff out. I won’t look at anything because it’s not going to affect me. And I’m going to have joy and no one will steal my joy because I’ve got a good team and a good bunch of kids and they’re for each other. So you’re not stealing my joy. Say I’m the worst in America ever. OK, I agree. Can we move on now and get on to something serious?”