John Calipari went 'old school' to make practice harder than the games again

John Calipari says you can’t blame Kentucky‘s loss to UNCW on DJ Wagner‘s absence. He played just ten minutes vs. Miami (FL) in a game the Wildcats looked like world-beaters. You can’t blame it on Aaron Bradshaw‘s play, either. He was a plus-11 in 13 minutes of game action.

The film revealed everything he needed to know — and why it’s all fixable moving forward.

“The biggest thing is you win or you learn. Today we watched an hour of the tape, I had the staff put it together,” Calipari said during his call-in radio show Monday evening. “Why didn’t we pass the ball? We had 45 possessions of no passes or one pass. You’ve watched us play all year, what in the world? Why? So what we did was show them, but then we showed them Miami (tape). ‘Well, you just passed the ball and created shots for each other.’ We did not create one good shot for each other in this game — everything was like pulling teeth. The second thing was about the turnovers. Are you kidding me? Wait a minute, what is different in five days? Less than that? What was the mindset going in? And were you desperate enough? Because they seem to be more desperate than us.”

Put simply, the ball stopped moving. And when it did move, it led to uncharacteristic turnovers. Calipari also saw three failed box-outs that directly contributed to the loss, along with giving up straight-line drives on defense. That’s how you lose to a team you shouldn’t lose to — even a potential NCAA Tournament team.

Kentucky’s response? First, it was film. Then came practice, a wild one for the Wildcats. Calipari went old school on Monday, back to the basics. A little unorthodox? Sure, but it worked.

“Today’s practice — oh man. … I wasn’t cussing or swearing, wasn’t throwing balls, wouldn’t go nuts. But it was old school. There was an NBA scout in there watching the old school stuff, we literally had guys hitting the floor, like, falling down. Tre (Mitchell) went so hard that he had to stop. ‘Literally, my legs won’t move right now.’ We did some wall sits today. Have you ever done wall sits? Have you done them until your leg shakes? We did wall sits, why? I have two or three guys on the team who can’t get in their stance and stay there, so what happens is a straight-line drive right by you. My option is you’re not going to play or we can figure this out.

“How about lane slides? In the lane, elbow to elbow, side to side, you competing against a teammate? One of you gets to stop, the other has to go another time? You should have seen them go, oh my gosh. Jordan Burks and Rob Dillingham, Tre beat Reed (Sheppard). If you had seen Tre go, you would have said, ‘Where’s his motor like that? Why doesn’t he (do that more often)?’ … I went back to some things I had done to get them to pass the ball and move the ball.”

And it doesn’t stop there. Calipari covered the rims today so the Wildcats physically couldn’t score, no matter how hard they tried. The goal was to force his team to rebound the ball. That was the only way to earn points.

“Then I did another thing today, I put the rim in the rim. Everybody’s saying we’re not offensive rebounding enough. And you know what? They’re right. And we’re not blocking out,” he said. “We lost the game because of three block-outs against Wilmington. You’re gonna lose a basketball game because (of that)? So we got the rims up and we’re playing — both ends. There is not one shot going in. And you know what? We went up and down. If you offensive rebounded, you got two points — because the ball wouldn’t go in, you couldn’t score any other way. And if you defensive rebounded, you got one point. So I said, ‘Every time down, create a three for each other. I don’t care what you do. Run it, drive it, do it, get it, somebody shoot a three and we’ll have to go rebound it. So we did that.’

The Wildcats turned back to some of their bad habits, and “put (their) hand in the fire,” as Calipari put it. And he learned a lot about himself with the loss, then at practice on Monday.

Practices are often harder than actual games at Kentucky, and that hasn’t necessarily been the case this season. His goal is to flip that back, starting this week.

“I’m disappointed, but that doesn’t slow me down. When you win or you learn, I learned a lot,” Calipari said. “I said to them today before I left, ‘The games became harder than the practices. So whose fault is that? That’s my fault.’ I can’t blame them. Today, I made practice harder than the games. That’s my job with this kind of group. We’ve got to be better rebounding, we’ve got to be better defensively. If you don’t stay in a stance and play with your hands up, we’re not getting better. If you don’t go meet the guy to block them out or avoid a block-out and go to the rim and go rebound, we’re not going to get to where we want to go. Because we have the pieces, the toughness, the defensive discipline, all that stuff. We’ve got to bring that out of this group.

They “just reverted,” Calipari said. The bad habits came back against UNCW. Now it’s his job to get this team back to playing the way it did less than a week ago — and better.

“I’ve got a great group of guys, and I’m gonna be on them. It’s my job to bring out the best in them. It’s my job to hold them accountable. … I hate losing any games. I’ll say this for our fans. When people are saying we’re as good as any team in the country: not quite. And then you have the people where they say it’s their opinion, it’s not. It’s their hope that we’re not any good. They’re not right either.

“We’re not that far. And I think you could tell, me being in practice today and what we did, I’m kind of juiced. Like, ‘OK, we’re on the right path.'”