Calipari has identified the keys to this Kentucky team. ‘That’s going to be our culture.’
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Game day: No. 4 Kentucky 56, Missouri Western State 38
Click below for more of the Herald-Leader’s and Kentucky.com’s coverage of Sunday night’s men’s basketball exhibition game between Kentucky and Missouri Western State in Rupp Arena.
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A few hours before Kentucky’s exhibition opener against Missouri Western State on Sunday night, John Calipari took to Twitter to challenge his players.
The UK basketball coach said he was excited to get back on the court with this team and that he had told his Wildcats that they would be evaluated in three areas: defense (on and off the ball), rebounding (defensive and offensive) and sprinting.
“This is how they can separate themselves on the court!!” Calipari ended his tweet.
Kentucky ultimately defeated its Division II foe, 56-38, in an ugly game with few highlights.
This is still the preseason, however, and the final score doesn’t much matter. How did the Cats do in Calipari’s areas of emphasis? It was a mixed bag.
Calipari said he would reserve total judgment until he watched the film, but there were still some immediate takeaways. And a quick look at the box score was all that was necessary to spot one negative: Missouri Western State outrebounded the No. 4-ranked Wildcats 36-35. And the visitors had 10 offensive rebounds to Kentucky’s eight, despite the teams missing a similar number of shots. (Missouri Western missed 36; UK missed 31).
“We accepted being blocked out,” Calipari said. “Or, ‘If I run in there, it’s going to get rough. So I’ll kind of act like I’m going in, but I ain’t going in there.’”
Playing a more physical brand of basketball is something that Calipari has harped on this preseason, and it’s clear that — after Sunday night’s performance — he’ll stay on that subject. Those who aren’t afraid to mix it up in the paint will stay on the court. This night’s example of that: Cason Wallace, a freshman guard listed at 6 feet, 4 inches and the Cats’ leading rebounder Sunday with seven boards.
“Well, we need Cason Wallaces on the floor,” Calipari said. “Did you see that last rebound? He jerked it out of the guy’s arms. That’s how you’ve got to — this thing is a man’s game. It really is.”
Of course, this team is playing its preseason without Oscar Tshiebwe, the reigning national player of the year, the leading rebounder in the country last season, and an all-around force in the paint. And, of course, Tshiebwe’s mere presence makes Kentucky a much better rebounding team, whether it’s him gobbling up the boards or drawing the opponent’s attention away from his teammates so they can hit the glass.
Senior forward Jacob Toppin — second on the team Sunday night with six rebounds — acknowledged Tshiebwe’s return will make things easier on the rest of the Cats, but he also said this is an opportunity for other guys to figure out their own games in his absence.
“It’s the first game,” Toppin said. “So we’re going to go back and watch film, see where we can get better. Obviously, we need to see, personally, what we did — how did our man get by us to get a rebound? And just fix it. It just comes with time.”
The sprinting objective went “pretty good,” according to Calipari, who said every player was tracked on that and the coaches would get that exact information later on. Toppin and Wallace both said Calipari has been hammering home the need to go all out — not only getting up and down the court in transition — but in the halfcourt, too.
Jogging is not an option, Wallace explained. “Sprinting is our thing.”
Defense is where the Cats have been challenged the most in recent days.
Calipari called out his team’s attention to detail in that area a few days after the Blue-White Game in Pikeville last weekend. He was careful not to be too glowing in his praise of the Cats’ defense against Missouri Western State — “Defended fairly well,” Calipari said — but other comments he made seemed to indicate he was pleased with the effort.
The Griffons’ 38 points were the lowest scored against Kentucky by an exhibition opponent in 10 years.
CJ Fredrick, who led the Cats with 15 points, said Calipari has been stressing defense since the Blue-White Game. Offense is going to come, the coach told them throughout the week, but defense would be the emphasis moving forward.
“And I think that’s kind of what you saw,” Fredrick said. “Defensively, I thought we were pretty good.”
Better communication was a specific talking point for Calipari, and Fredrick said Missouri Western State — a team that runs a lot of action and utilizes all manner of screens — was a good opponent to test the Cats in that area.
Fredrick and Toppin both grinned at the mention of Calipari’s pregame tweet. Those two veterans didn’t need to actually see it to know what the Kentucky coach wanted Sunday.
“He made it very clear what he was looking at today,” Fredrick said. “We knew.”
Wallace said UK works on all three areas — defense, rebounding, sprinting — extensively.
“There’s no reason we should come into a game expecting not to do those things,” he said.
No one — not even Calipari — seemed too bothered by the Cats’ offensive output: 56 points against a Division II opponent, shooting 40.4 percent from the floor. The offense will come, they all said. It’s what you do when you’re not hitting shots that’s going to matter.
And the veterans seemed to already understand that these three areas of focus won’t be a narrative that changes in November or December or at any other point in the season, even as new challenges arise.
“That’s going to be our culture,” Toppin said. “We’re going to be the team who rebounds, who sprints, who plays defensively. Because we’re such a good team offensively that we kind of get away from the other things. And he’s going to keep us in check.”
Next game
Exhibition: Kentucky State at No. 4 Kentucky
When: 7 p.m. Thursday
TV: SEC Network Plus (online only)
Radio: WLAP-AM 630, WBUL-FM 98.1
This story was originally published October 31, 2022 at 6:30 AM.
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