John Calipari has outside the box defensive tweak in mind for NCAA Tournament to counteract beer muscles

Kentucky enters the NCAA Tournament with arguably the best offense of any team in the field, but also one of the worst defenses, which is why John Calipari has a possible “tweak” in mind for March.

The Kentucky head coach addressed media at his house just after the Selection Show on Sunday evening, where he spoke glowingly about his team and was excited for the week(s) ahead. However, following another brutal defensive performance against Texas A&M in the SEC Tournament loss, Calipari knows he may have to try out some new strategies in the Big Dance.

“We may have a couple tweaks. I got some things I think I’m going to have to try to do. So I got a couple tweaks in mind,” he told reporters before revealing one of his potential ideas.

“If a team has guards that just break us down, what else can we do? How about if I put both seven-footers in? It may take away a little offense, but now, you got two seven-footers, a little harder to score at the rim. So there’s some different things we can do.”

After that answer, another reporter asked if Calipari would go to that strategy simply because he doesn’t trust his guards to stay in front of opposing players. But he said the guards have actually improved in that respect.

“No, they’ve gotten so much better. But what happens is a guy scores one or two and he gets beer muscles and now he’s throwing them on big guys.”

Texas A&M guards Wade Taylor and Tyrece Radford were certainly throwing rocks into an ocean in last Friday’s game, because those two could not miss in that game, which Calipari noted.

“They made a lot of tough shots,” he continued. “When I watched the tape, we had some breakdowns defensively, got beat to a few balls, had unnecessary turnovers, like five or six, unnecessary, that led to baskets.”

Despite all those issues in that one game, though, Calipari saw a fight from his team that gives him confidence in a much deeper run in the team’s second tournament this March.

“But when I watch the tape, I’m like ‘we’ll be alright.’ You know why? They never stopped fighting, they fought the whole game.”

His last comment on the matter: “Our fans should be excited about it.”

With a nice draw, elite talent and John Calipari as head coach, there’s plenty of reason for belief in this year’s Wildcats to exorcise some demons of the past couple years.