Kentucky MBB is evolving to make mental health a bigger priority

Oscar Tshiebwe made headlines over the weekend when he told reporters about a conversation he had with his head coach, John Calipari. The reigning national player of the year was incredibly blunt with his point — and it was a bit of a shock to hear him say it publicly. He wasn’t necessarily being critical, but he wanted it to be known that there is change happening behind the scenes.

“You want to be so hard on them, sometimes you really mess up their minds. You are making it worse,” Tshiebwe said candidly about a recent exchange he had with Calipari. “And Coach, he came out, now he started motivating them boys. ‘Nah man you’re good man! Come and see me! Do this, do this!’ And kids now are stepping up because they hear more positive stuff.“

As society continues to progress, the younger generations continue to, as well. What worked five years ago in regard to how a head coach challenges his players might not necessarily work for a player of the same skillset and demeanor today.

There are myriad reasons why, with social media being a driving force behind it. Times are changing, and those in charge need to adapt to those changes or risk losing team chemistry because of it. If a player (or anyone in life) is not in the right state of mind, how can they be expected to perform at the highest level?

It makes sense when boiled down as simply as possible, too: humans prefer positivity over negativity.

“You can’t play anything, you can’t do anything in life without having your head and your mental awareness intact,” Kentucky point guard Sahvir Wheeler said during Monday’s pre-LSU press conference. “You can’t do your job if you’re not mentally there. You can’t play basketball if you’re not mentally there. Basketball is — a lot of it is mental. It’s confidence, it’s doing what you’re gonna do, knowing where you should be, and when to go, the timing of it. It’s not just basketball like I said, it’s life. You can’t go after your dreams and aspirations if you’re down on yourself.”

Near the end of 2022, Alabama football head coach Nick Saban talked about how he’s had to switch up his coaching approach for some of his players in recent seasons. He’s ditched the screaming and yelling tactic in favor of being more personable and approachable.

“I’ve found that players respond better to teaching and showing them what they did wrong than they do with actually yelling and screaming,” Saban said in November, per The Tuscaloosa News. “I don’t think that does a lot of good.”

It’s no secret that Calipari has shown a tendency over the years to do exactly what Saban is actively trying to change about his approach to coaching. Tshiebwe even said it out loud for everyone to hear. Some kids don’t respond to a coach who gets his point across through yelling — on the other hand, some do. But the point is that a head coach needs to adapt to each player individually in order to get the best out of them instead of treating them all the same way.

That appears to be the case between Calipari and senior forward Jacob Toppin, the latter of whom came into the season with NBA Draft aspirations but has mostly failed to live up to those lofty expectations. Or he did until Saturday afternoon when Toppin dropped a career-high 24 points against Louisville.

After hitting “rock bottom” not long before that 86-63 win against the Cardinals, Toppin had a handful of important talks with Calipari, his teammates, and his support group. He was focusing too much on the outside noise and not on himself. Calipari reinserted Toppin into the starting lineup ahead of his impressive performance against Louisville after coming off the bench in the previous two.

“I’ve been in a rough patch that I needed to get out. I’ve had a lot of support from my teammates and my coaching staff, and it just feels good to be back to my old self. I feel good mentally and physically,” Toppin said on Saturday. “I had a good talk with Coach Cal the other day, I had a good talk with my teammates, and then I called a few other people just to try and get back right mentally and it helped a lot.”

The result was his best outing in a Kentucky uniform.

For someone like Toppin, who has more to lose than most, the weight of the world is on his shoulders. He needs to be coached and taught differently than someone such as Adou Thiero or Ugonna Onyenso, two freshmen who are just looking to crack the rotation more often — not necessarily focused on leading their team to a national title while being a first-round draft pick this summer.

Kentucky basketball’s Director of Player Development, TJ Beisner, said in a social media post on Sunday that the program is collectively learning how to make those connections between the staff and players more effectively.

Something we have discovered as a staff is that the young people we work with today aren’t just different from how we were at that age, they’re also very different from the young people we worked with just five years ago. Social media continues to be a big influencer in that, but also living through the pandemic and social challenges and changes, as well as a number of other influences, have given us a different type of young person to teach.

We are seeing that we have players who often have a very high emotional intelligence, but sometimes have difficulty processing the high volume of feedback (good and bad) that is coming from fans, family, coaches, teammates, etc. They are more comfortable assessing and discussing their mental health, but in need of more support.

That obviously creates a new challenge for us. We have to evolve with our players. And I love that Coach Calipari is allowing (and challenging!) us to do just that.

As our season has progressed, we’ve had some challenges on the court, like all teams do, but we’ve also had some unique challenges off the court, both as a group and individually. We are utilizing a number of resources to provide support to the team, but this is an area where we want to continue to improve and would love thoughts and suggestions of what has worked with your organization or team.

One of my favorite resources is Chris Bosh’s “Letters To A Young Athlete”, which has so many great lessons for dealing with pressures and challenges of competing at a high level. Players seem to like it too because it’s coming from a really credible place and it’s a fun read. We’ve used this to teach the team and also in private individual meetings.

This was a message we shared with the entire team prior to our game this week. Short, direct and generic enough that it can reach the whole group.

Please share any resources or strategies that have helped your teams!

TJ Beisner, Kentucky Basketball Director of Player Development

Playing for a school like Kentucky sure does make this a more challenging task, too. Everything is put under a microscope. Anything short of near-perfection is going to be criticized. The team as a whole understands that, and there is an added emphasis on being mentally locked in moving forward and how they can make it happen.

“That’s something that everyone is kinda emphasizing but playing here, you gotta make sure you’re strong because there are a lot of highs and lows,” Wheeler added. “When it’s high, when you win, everyone thinks you’re the best in the world. When you lose, everyone acts like it’s the end of the world. So being able to keep a level head and confide in each other, continue to love each other, obviously helps you out a lot.”