Cam’Ron Fletcher’s return to Kentucky’s basketball team includes a smile and a hug
Upon returning to the Kentucky team, freshman Cam’Ron Fletcher had a message for his past, now present and presumably future teammates:
“Don’t do what I did. You don’t want to go home. This is where you want to be.”
That’s how UK Coach John Calipari described the moral of his team’s modern-day version of the story of the prodigal son.
After a television camera caught Fletcher’s disgruntlement — presumably about playing time — late in Kentucky’s loss to North Carolina, Calipari told the freshman to separate from the team and decide whether his priority should be on individual or group goals.
As Calipari told it during a Southeastern Conference coaches teleconference Monday, the story had a happy ending as Fletcher returned with a smile. Coach and player hugged.
The return followed a group phone call that included the player, his mother, his high school coach and Calipari, the UK coach said.
Calipari said he set conditions for a return.
“I told him you may not play a minute this year, how are you going to deal with that?” Calipari said. “What if you don’t play? I want everyone (on the call) to hear that, so we understand that this is for the long haul. This is to get you to change.
“I think the kid feels bad. But he needed to have a wake-up call.”
In UK’s first six games, Fletcher averaged 8.7 minutes and 2.2 points. In the four games before separating from the team, he played a total of 20 minutes and did not score.
With the challenges Kentucky faces with a 1-6 start to the season and the coronavirus pandemic not gone away, Calipari called Fletcher’s absence “a blip on the screen.”
Sealed with a kiss
Twice in the last three games, Olivier Sarr missed a mid-range jump shot that would have given Kentucky the lead in the final seconds. It happened in losses to Notre Dame and Louisville.
Calipari all but promised that Sarr will take another shot with winning or losing at stake.
“After the (Louisville) game, I kissed Olivier on the forehead and said, ‘I’m going to go to you again,’” the UK coach said.
This vote of confidence came at a meeting in the coach’s office.
As Calipari told it, Sarr replied with a question: “Why do you have confidence in me to make it? I missed it twice.”
To which, Calipari said that Brandon Knight missed clutch shots in Kentucky’s 2010-11 season, then made them in the NCAA Tournament, most notably against Princeton in the first round and against Ohio State in the Sweet 16.
Add a game?
After Kentucky lost at Louisville, Calipari lamented the lack of games in the pre-conference portion of the schedule to help build player confidence.
Bellarmine, which is in its first season as a Division I team, has adopted a we’ll-play-anybody attitude in hopes of building “credibility,” Coach Scott Davenport said Saturday night.
Although UK does not play again until Saturday at Mississippi State, there will not be a game added this week.
“We were going back and forth,” Calipari said of adding a game. “And I’m, like, do we really want to prepare for another team when we’re concerned about our team?”
Raging fans
Not for the first time during times of trouble, Calipari asked fans to direct their ire at him and not at the players. And he sounded assured of the presence of fan ire.
“The greatest thing about Kentucky is that you have a raging fan base,” he said. “But when things are going south, you’ve got to have to deal with that or you’re not going to have a raging fan base.”
At some other programs, the fan reaction to a 1-6 start might be “Next. Who cares?” Calipari said. “Not here.”
