Calipari: SEC semifinal loss was a "godsend" for NCAA practice (and the tweak)

Losing to Tennessee in the SEC Tournament semifinal game was a tough pill for Big Blue Nation to swallow. BBN wants to win every SEC Tournament and the fans certainly don’t like losing to Tennessee.

But for the team, the Saturday loss allowed more time for the Wildcats to get home to prepare for the NCAA Tournament. The preparation included individual meetings in which John Calipari asked each of his players to define their respective roles within the team, to get back to playing the way he thinks Kentucky should play.

On Wednesday at the NCAA Tournament, Kellan Grady told reporters, “I think all of us can say the meetings were very productive.”

For his role, Grady said, “My role all year has been to make shots and to help defend and be reliable on defense. That’s what I said when I was asked, and then he said ‘and to fly,’ which is consistent with our whole team, to get up and down the court and run the court as well as we can. I think all of us have a good concentration on what to do for our team and how to be most productive in helping us win.”

When it came time for Oscar Tshiebwe to define his role, he said, “My role, like Coach told me, is always the same, playing with a lot of energy, grab the basketball, and I need to communicate. He was tougher because I was not doing a great job of that.”

A third Wildcat available at Wednesday’s press conference, Sahvir Wheeler defined his, too.

“To play with the ultimate pace, be disruptive on both ends of the court, get guys open shots and play with a passion, with a smile on my face, and ultimately be the extension of a coach, of a coaching staff,” Wheeler explained. “Me and Coach Cal have to have the strongest connection to know what to run, who to get involved — and be a leader on the court.”

Collectively, they’ve put the Tennessee loss behind them and are focused on Calipari’s message entering the Big Dance: push the tempo and play off each other’s roles. And to fly, as Grady noted.

Calipari: “Getting beat in the SEC Tournament was like a godsend”

Also during Kentucky’s longer-than-expected time between tournaments, Calipari put Kentucky through a 75-minute scrimmage on Monday with full contact and scorekeeping, then another scrimmage before the team left Lexington on Tuesday. It’s something he hadn’t been able to do late in the regular season with injuries to Sahvir Wheeler and TyTy Washington limiting their practice time and durability,

“The injury to our two guards, because we survived it, we thought now they’re coming back and we’re okay,” Calipari explained from the NCAA Tournament podium. “So getting beat in the SEC Tournament was like a godsend because we scrimmaged an hour and 15 minutes. We scrimmaged 45 minutes yesterday. What? What if someone gets hurt? I know. I know. Because that’s always in the forefront of my mind.”

The scrimmages helped Kentucky get back in sync to its free-flowing offense, playing loose and, “off of one another.”

“The only way you could do that is scrimmage,” Calipari added. “And because we got 10 really good players, really, we got more than that, but we could put 10 guys on the floor that—it was competitive. They went at each other.”

It sounds like the early-week tweak was picking up the pace in practice with full scrimmages to make up for lost time. Roles were redefined to keep up the pace of play and the period of “dragging game-to-game,” as Calipari put it, is hopefully a thing of the past.

Losing to Tennessee still sucked, though… just my opinion.