What is this Kentucky Basketball team's identity? Wearing teams out

After seven games, what do we know about this Kentucky Basketball team? Considering we’ve only seen the entire lineup used once, in the season-opener vs. Duke, that’s not a very easy question to answer. Obviously, Oscar Tshiebwe is a monster on the boards, leading the nation in rebounding. Sahvir Wheeler leads the nation in assists. TyTy Washington is slowly building towards stardom. But what about the team as a whole?

After Friday’s win over North Florida, John Calipari and Tshiebwe shed some light on this team’s potential identity: wearing opponents out. Through seven games, Kentucky’s adjusted tempo (possessions per 40 minutes vs. an average Division I tempo) is 69.8, which ranks behind only the 2016-17 team with De’Aaron Fox, Malik Monk, Bam Adebayo in the Calipari Era. Kentucky’s average possessions last 16.2 seconds, second in the Cal Era behind the 2016-17 team and the 2009-10 team and fourth in the SEC behind Alabama, LSU, and Florida.

“The way we’re playing now, what we’re trying to do is continue to run for 40 minutes,” Calipari said. “If you can’t do that when you’re in, you’re not going to be playing much.”

“The way we run, no one can run with us,” Tshiebwe said. “Most teams quit in the middle but we scored, and scored, and scored, so that they couldn’t run with us.”

“That’s one thing we do best, is rebound and run”

Again, it’s hard to pin down a team’s identity when five of the seven teams they’ve played rank outside of the KenPom Top 250. It’s a lot easier to wear out smaller, less athletic squads; however, Calipari is using these “tune-up games” to condition his team for a full-40 minute effort and troubleshoot what to do when a team can run with them.

“If you’re not understanding why we’re doing this, we can eventually wear them down a little bit,” Calipari said. “We may have some teams that we don’t wear down. That’s fine. But you’ve got to shoot the ball better then.”

And when the shots aren’t falling, rebounding becomes even more important. Take it away, Oscar Tshiebwe.

“For us, if we don’t shoot the three well, we always go rebound it and run,” Oscar said. “That’s one thing we do best, is rebound and run. I don’t think there’s anybody that can keep up with us when we’re rebounding and running.”

Griping about the non-conference home schedule has become an annual tradition in the Calipari era; however, as this team continues to battle illness and injury, it has been a blessing. Tshiebwe is looking forward to seeing how things come together as the Cats get back to full strength and the schedule heats up in December.

“I like the way we play. I think we’re going to keep getting better. These moments like now, right now we’re just learning how to play and we’re preparing ourselves. By the time we get to January and February, that’s the time we’re going to become so strong and these freshmen they’re going to know what to do.”

“This team, we’ll be unstoppable by the time everybody is healthy.”