Miles College seeks to test Kentucky basketball’s ‘essential’ strategies
Strength versus strength seems to set up Kentucky’s second — and final — exhibition game Friday night against Miles College.
During this preseason, UK has put a premium on pace of play. In essence, the faster the better.
“It’s essential,” Davion Mintz said Wednesday. “We’re hoping teams press us so we can play fast, score quickly (and opponents must) defend the full court. That’s just kind of the feel we’re trying to have this year.”
Assistant coach Jai Lucas echoed that sentiment Thursday.
“One of the things we’ve talked about all year so far is playing fast, playing with speed, seeing how quickly we can get the ball up the court,” he said.
A faster pace suits Kentucky, “especially having a small guard with Sahvir (Wheeler),” Lucas added. “You kind of have to play that way. We have the pieces that kind of fit it.”
Lucas mentioned freshman TyTy Washington, shooters like Kellan Grady, Dontaie Allen and CJ Fredrick, plus athletic wings like Keion Brooks, Jacob Toppin and Daimion Collins.
“We’re built for speed,” Lucas said. “We think that’s one of our advantages. We want to play to it.”
By contrast, Miles College wants to be a roadblock. Coach Fred Watson, a seven-time Southern Intercollegiate Athletic Conference Coach of the Year, cites defense as the key to his program’s history of success.
“The way I’ve been consistent over the years is our defensive approach,” he said.
That may be especially true this coming season. Miles College lost three of its top four scorers, four of five starters and five of the top seven from last season’s rotation.
“So, yeah, I’m in a total rebuild,” Watson said. “But it really doesn’t matter because my style of winning is not based on high-level talent. It’s based on high-level effort.”
Watson, who cited South Carolina Coach Frank Martin as his defensive mentor, labels the defense “gap and squeeze.” He likened it to the pack line defense made prominent in recent seasons by Virginia.
“For me, defense is all about tolerance, and what will tolerate. . . . ,” Watson said. “I can’t tolerate a guy getting a straight-line drive to the basket. We sit in gaps so we don’t get a straight-line drive.
“I don’t like guys catching and shooting. No catch-and-shoot threes, so we squeeze the ball on the pass, so they have to pull it down.
“No transition scorers.
“We can’t tolerate immediate offensive rebound put-backs. We understand we’re going to give up offensive rebounds. But we don’t want to score it. We want them to throw it back out and play against our set defense.”
Kentucky’s offense under John Calipari has featured straight-line drives (hence the label dribble-drive) and transition offense.
Lucas did not object to the proposition that there’s such a thing as playing too fast. There are times in a game when a team must tap the brakes.
“It comes with the time in the game, time and score,” he said. “Maybe there’s a point where you’re up six with two minutes to go.”
A scoring opportunity early in the possession may seem possible. “But you don’t need it right now,” Lucas said. “It may be time to kind of slow it down and grunt it out. Getting them to understand the when, where and why is a big part of it.”
The opponent’s turnovers and/or missed shots present the best time to seek transition scores, Lucas said.
And Kentucky will want those scores. “For 85 percent of the game, I think we want to play fast,” Lucas said.
Miles College wants to limit those opportunities.
Each team’s objective in Rupp Arena on Friday night seems to be to foil the other side’s primary objective.
“The things they try to take away from you are what we want to do,” Lucas said. “So, it’ll be good to see how we can adjust on the fly and open up the court and do what we want to do.
“And I think a lot of that will be predicated on (UK’s) defense. Can you stop them, turn them over (or) get the rebound and get out and run?”
Watson agreed that Kentucky presents an acid test of his defensive mantra of limiting drives to the basket, transition offense and offensive put-backs.
“Yeah, it’s a challenge,” the Miles College coach said. “What they do is what we try to eliminate. It’s just going to be a battle of wills.”
Friday
Miles College at No. 10 Kentucky
What: Preseason exhibition game
Where: Rupp Arena
When: 7 p.m.
TV: SEC Network
This story was originally published November 4, 2021 at 1:20 PM.
