John Calipari: "DJ Wagner is the easiest guy to coach on this team"

Freshman guard DJ Wagner didn’t have the best showing against Texas A&M-Commerce. 11 points and three assists (with just one turnover) on 5-13 shooting is a solid outing, but more is expected out of Kentucky’s five-star floor general. He missed a handful of shots around the rim, air-balled a three-pointer, and was burned several times on defense.

But head coach John Calipari isn’t concerned with Wagner moving forward. Why? For starters, we’re only two games into the regular season. It’d be more shocking if Wagner didn’t struggle at times during his first few college games. But more importantly, Calipari is completely confident in Wagner’s ability to adjust and improve — that’s just his mindset and approach to the game of basketball. Always has been.

“The greatest thing about (Wagner), like he missed shots today, missed some baskets, missed some layups. I’m not worried about him because whatever you ask him to do, it registers and he does it right then,” Calipari said after Kentucky’s 81-61 win over Texas A&M-Commerce on Friday night. “And I’m trying to tell him, look, you have got to do both, create shots and make shots. That’s who you are for this team. You’ve got to do both. You can’t just try to be making shots and you can’t just be trying to create shots for others. You have to do both.”

Toeing the line of being able to do both scoring and passing is much easier said than done, especially for a player like Wagner who was used to scoring the majority of his team’s buckets in high school. That breakthrough might not happen tomorrow, but it will at some point this season.

“DJ is the easiest guy to coach on this team,” Calipari said. “Because when you tell him what you want him to do, he does it right then. And he works on it, and he’s smart about that. There are games — he’s like Reed (Sheppard) — there’s gonna be games he misses shots. So as long as he does all the other things it doesn’t matter. And that’s what makes it less pressure to make a shot.”

Through two games, Wagner is shooting 42.3 percent overall and just 1-6 from beyond the arc. He’s been able to gain some offensive rhythm as both games toiled along, but slow starts have bogged down his momentum. Iffy shot selections from three-point range and contested shots at the rim have raised some question marks.

However, in both games, he’s found ways to respond. More impressively, he’s done so without forcing the issue. Wagner is all about figuring out how to make the right play instead of the best play for himself. He knows it’s not all about scoring the ball. Wagner has seven assists to just two turnovers through his first two college games.

“I try not even to focus on that in the first place,” Wagner said postgame about his slow shooting starts. “That’s not the most important thing when it comes to playing on a team like this and playing on a team in general. Just doing whatever we can all do to help each other win. That’s not even our main focus, like hitting shots or banking on shots. I feel like once we miss shots, it don’t really affect us so much because that’s not our focus. We’re just focused on making the right play and doing whatever we got to do to win.”

All this being said, Kentucky will have to make some shots when they take on No. 1 Kansas this Tuesday. But at least it doesn’t sound like a couple of missed shots will get this group down on themselves. We’ll know for sure early next week.