UK basketball has struggled this season. Are the Cats mentally tough enough for SEC play?
When John Calipari speaks to the media, there’s usually something specific on his mind.
Whether it’s an aspect of his Kentucky team at large, or something particular to an individual player, Calipari finds a way to make it a focal point of his responses to questions from the press.
This habit held true a couple weeks ago.
Just minutes after the Wildcats lost an eminently winnable game to UCLA in the CBS Sports Classic in New York City, Calipari used his postgame media session — and Kentucky’s 38.5% free-throw shooting in the game — as a vehicle to harp on UK’s mental toughness.
“Mental toughness comes into play in all that. You’ve just got to be tough enough to know, ‘I’m going to the line. I’m making these,’” Calipari said, while lamenting UK’s eight missed free throws in the loss. “The only way you can learn about your team mentally and physically is in games like this, where you just get physically beat and learn.”
After a get-right home win over Florida A&M last week, Calipari played the hits again.
“We should be one of the best free-throw shooting teams. Again, that is mental toughness,” Calipari said after the Cats shot an improved, but still poor, 68.4% from the foul line against FAMU. “I also know it is contagious; when one guy gets up and misses two, the next guy is missing two.”
Calipari’s choice to use free-throw shooting as a conduit to discuss his team’s mental toughness raises an interesting, and important, question with Kentucky ahead of SEC play starting Wednesday night: How mentally tough are the 2022-23 Kentucky Wildcats?
How will an experienced Kentucky team handle conference play?
When the Herald-Leader posed the question of mental toughness to a wide sample of Kentucky players — ranging from star senior Oscar Tshiebwe to emerging freshman Cason Wallace — a common theme appears: UK is a work in progress, and a team eager to use its past failures to create future successes.
“The mentality is still the same: Stay positive,” Tshiebwe said last week. “Coach always says, ‘It’s not losing. There’s always winning or learning.’ For us, we’re learning by losing, so now my teammates and everybody sees it’s not easy. We’ve just got to be tough in every position to win games.”
“I feel like we’re getting more mentally stronger,” added Wallace. “We haven’t got many wins against ranked teams, so hopefully we can be strong enough and mentally strong enough to where we can come out against Kansas and get a dub.”
While the Cats shouldn’t overlook the nine opponents on the schedule between now and the Kansas game on Jan. 28, the stretch to start SEC play will especially be an exercise in how UK’s experienced roster navigates adversity.
According to KenPom, Kentucky ranks 113th in the country this season in average Division I college basketball experience (2.24 years).
Compare this to Calipari’s previous teams at UK:
▪ 2009-10: 1.12 years (278th)
▪ 2010-11: 0.83 years (324th)
▪ 2011-12: 1.18 years (238th)
▪ 2012-13: 0.94 years (297th)
▪ 2013-14: 0.42 years (345th)
▪ 2014-15: 1.04 years (291st)
▪ 2015-16: 0.77 years (323rd)
▪ 2016-17: 0.63 years (341st)
▪ 2017-18: 0.21 years (351st)
▪ 2018-19: 1.03 years (298th)
▪ 2019-20: 1.12 years (284th)
▪ 2020-21: 1.19 years (264th)
▪ 2021-22: 1.87 years (186th)
How does UK junior forward Jacob Toppin think this kind of rare experience can help the Wildcats in their pursuit of mental toughness?
“You can see some guys kind of shying away from things because maybe they’re not playing enough or maybe they’re not playing to their true potential,” Toppin said. “It’s just about staying together, staying connected and making sure everyone’s good physically and mentally. ... There’s a lot of negativity in this world, a lot of negative comments being made toward us, so we have to figure out ways to just dial in and just cancel those negative thoughts out and just stay focused.”
Toppin turns inward to improve on-court play
Of the Kentucky players the Herald-Leader spoke to last week about UK’s mental resolve with conference play looming, Toppin was the most open, both from a personal and team perspective.
Toppin talked about how the game of basketball is 90% mental, and how the holiday break was necessary for some Kentucky players to reset and refocus, including himself.
“Obviously for me, things aren’t going well, I need to be better for me, but for this team as well,” Toppin said before last week’s Florida A&M game, in which he was replaced in the Kentucky starting lineup by Lance Ware. “If I can fight through that, then that’s being mentally tough. If I can fight through adversity, if I can fight through Coach yelling at me every day telling me to be better because I know I can be better and he knows I can be better, that’s being mentally tough.”
Toppin’s individual response to what’s been an underwhelming season so far — 45.37% true shooting with 40.2% shooting overall from the field — may serve as a good litmus test for how Kentucky as a team will respond after going 1-3 (with an average margin of defeat of 11.67 points) against name-brand opponents this season.
Toppin said he planned to stay in Lexington for Christmas, and preferred to be by himself as he worked through his on-court struggles.
“I like being alone. Sometimes being alone is what you need,” Toppin said, adding that he has a strong trust in God to help guide him through these moments. “Obviously, I’m going to find myself mentally and just get back to being better physically so I can be better for this team.”
While Toppin knows what’s best for him individually, Kentucky’s next two games — at a surging 11-1 Missouri team and at home in a rivalry showdown against Louisville — will be measuring-stick moments for a team yet to put together a standout showing this season.
“A lot of teams, they haven’t been challenged. We’ve been challenged. We took tough losses, and losses that we should have won,” said Ware, another experienced member of the UK frontcourt. “So we know what it feels like to be down and we can still use that and try to change the game. ... We have experience in tough games, that’s the biggest thing.”
Next game
No. 19 Kentucky at Missouri
What: Southeastern Conference opener
When: 7 p.m. EST Wednesday
TV: SEC Network
Radio: WLAP-AM 630, WBUL-FM 98.1
Records: Kentucky 8-3, Missouri 11-1
Series: Kentucky leads 14-2
Last meeting: Kentucky won 83-56 on Dec. 29, 2021, in Lexington
