Kentucky's new pregame routine: Stay together the night before and walkthrough at Rupp Arena

Kentucky Basketball mixed up its routine before hosting Texas A&M in Rupp Arena on Saturday. John Calipari pulled his team from the comfort of their own beds and checked everyone into a Lexington hotel on the company dime in order to assure his players are locked in on game day. The team held its pregame shootaround in Rupp Arena, too.

Traditionally, every Kentucky team spends the night before home games in their regular sleeping quarters over at the Lodge, or in rare cases, at an off-campus apartment, while the coaches get a Friday night with their families. Then on game days, the team’s Saturday shootarounds are held at the team’s practice facility on campus rather than the arena.

But Calipari liked Kentucky’s mentality in last Saturday’s road game at Tennessee a week ago, so he decided to treat Saturday’s game versus the Aggies like another one away from home. It’s a move he did with all of his teams in the past until he got to Kentucky, he noted.

And, yes, he confiscated the players’ phones again.

“You go and have a great night’s sleep and you’re not looking at anything,” he told them when he first began the no-phones policy in Knoxville. Calipari collected iPads and laptops in addition to the players’ phones and made a video game area for team bonding outside of their hotel room assignments.

After taking down Texas A&M in Rupp Arena, Calipari explained the move to stay as a team downtown, saying, “In my past life on weekend games, I always put my team in a hotel. I did that because all I was trying to do is get them together more. I wanted to in a hotel room; not one in their own room. And as the season went on and we had what everybody used to call Camp Cal, every weekend game and weekday game if there was no class, we stayed in the hotel. We had dinner together and breakfast together, did everything, wanting them to be with us.

“I did it last night,” he continued. “And you say, why did you do it? I don’t know. Something popped in my head and said, why don’t we stay at the Hyatt? We have never shot in Rupp Arena prior to a game since I’ve been here.”

Moving forward, Calipari intends to do it again before Kentucky’s next home game, the one in a week against the Kansas Jayhawks.

“The whole idea was, weekend games, why not? Why not? Why not be together? Why not have a meal together? Why not go walk-through together? Why not have a breakfast together? Why not walk to a shootaround together? It’s something that I’ve done with different teams. I just never did it here.”

Oscar approved

At least one player on the team likes the new policy–and it’s Oscar Tshiebwe, of course.

When asked after the game about the Friday night at the hotel with no electronics, Tshiebwe replied, “That is a great idea from Coach because he wanted some of the guys focused because sometimes they try to stay up too late on their phones. So it’s better, I think.

“It’s a better idea, taking our phones at 10:30 so everybody by 11:00, we’ve got to go to bed. If you don’t have a phone, you don’t have anything, I believe they’re going to go to sleep. So for me, taking my phone, after 10:30 is my time to read the Bible so I just read the Bible until I fall asleep. It is a good idea from my perspective.”

That’s so Oscar.