This crazy season, John Calipari will be Kentucky basketball’s ace in the hole
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2020-21 College Basketball Preview
The Lexington Herald-Leader’s 2020-21 College Basketball Preview special section was published in the print edition on Sunday, Nov. 15. Click below to view all the stories from that section that have been published on Kentucky.com.
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So you say 2020-21 is going to be an unpredictable, topsy-turvey, bubblicious, crazy and chaotic kind of coronavirus college basketball season.
I ask you, who’s better built for this than John Calipari?
Seriously, the Kentucky basketball coach thrives on chaos. He invites it every year, bidding farewell to another boatload of future professionals who’ve pulled anchor and headed out toward NBA waters, then welcoming in another thick crop of newcomers whose names occupy the higher echelons of the latest prospect rankings.
No different this year. Strike that. Even more so this year. We’re talking roster turnover on steroids. Sophomore forward Keion Brooks is the only returning contributor from the 2019-20 edition, whose season was prematurely ended when the SEC and NCAA Tournaments got COVID canceled. Joining Brooks are nine — count ‘em, nine — new faces, a high number even by Calipari’s revolving door standards.
Some are older. Olivier Sarr is the 7-foot transfer from Wake Forest who was an All-ACC Third Team selection a year ago. Davion Mintz is a grad transfer from Creighton who could end up being the starting point guard. Jacob Toppin, brother of former Dayton standout Obi Toppin, is a long and promising sophomore who played a season at Rhode Island.
The rest are Cal’s newest wave of the annual new wave: Devin Askew, Brandon Boston, Terrence Clarke, Cam’Ron Fletcher, Isaiah Jackson and Lance Ware. All coveted recruits. All are skilled with great upside and, of course, young. Boston might be the most intriguing. Believe it or not, the 6-foot-7 shooting guard from California via Georgia via Mississippi, is Calipari’s first five-star recruit since 2015.
But then, as obsessed members of Big Blue Nation, you probably already knew all that. What we don’t know is what exactly will happen while college basketball tries to conduct a season during the winter months of a pandemic that shows no sign of backing down.
Scheduling has been the first bridge to cross. Unlike football, where the conferences stuck primarily to a conference-only schedule, most basketball leagues have optimistically pieced together non-conference slates. That mean’s bubble arrangements. That means the letter combination of “MTE” has become a staple of the hoops vocabulary. Definition: Multiple Team Events.
But what happens if and when players test positive for COVID-19? College football teams have up to 85 players on scholarship but a slew of walk-ons. As long as one particular position group is not ravaged by the virus, or the number of healthy scholarship players plummets below 53, college football teams could keep on trucking. College basketball teams are limited to 13 scholarship players. An outbreak involving three or four players might be tougher to overcome. Plus, college football teams play once a week. College basketball teams normally play at least twice a week. And what happens when we get to the tournaments?
Cross your fingers and hope we do, because by then this Kentucky basketball team has a chance to be pretty, pretty good. When the NCAA and SEC finally granted Sarr an eligibility waiver to play in 2020-21, CBS’ Gary Parrish moved the Cats up just two spots, from 15th to 13th, in his Top 25 and 1 rankings, but most others were much more optimistic. Example: ESPN’s Dick Vitale penciled Kentucky in at No. 5 in his rankings.
It says here that, under the expected circumstances of the unexpected, Kentucky’s ace in the hole is actually Calipari. He’s the one always thinking of new ways to do things, who takes on an inordinate amount of new players every year and finds ways to teach, motivate and adapt. Creative is his calling card. If there is anyone who can find ways to deal with chaos, it’s Cal.
Not that it’s going to be easy, mind you. As with college football, college basketball should brace itself for disruptions, possible opt-outs, pauses, postponements, cancellations and uncertainty, not to mention confusion.
But no one hits the refresh button better than Calipari. Such a skill should serve Kentucky well this sure-to-be crazy season.
This story was originally published November 17, 2020 at 7:33 AM.
