Why does cal not feel his roster with more players? Every year we seem to have injuries that keeps guys out of games. They don’t have to be 5 stars . Plenty of kids that would love to come to uk. Not with these skinny jump out of gym non shooting guys. 4 star shooting meat on there bone type kid. Witch most of these teams seem to have. Just so frustrating always getting pushed around and being soft.
Cal building a team
- Thread starter wildcats4real
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Cal has no clue how to build a cohesive roster filled with depth.
He struggles with depth for sure, but it's not all on him. Guys like Allen and Hopkins run off when they aren't focal points
You mean having 9 big men and 4 guards is a bad idea??
I understand them, but then how do you build depth for these kind of injury scenarios?
The depth you bring in won't stay.
The way Allen played last year, he got the minutes he deserved.
Except one games Hopkins didn't do too much either. I thought he should have gotten more time last year and could have been really good for us.
They're both at smaller schools with weaker conference schedules and doing good as a focal point now. But that ain't SEC defenses their against either.
I agree, but guys might be more likely to stay if they got more min instead of Cal giving promised min and the showcase to his favorite shiny new NBA prospects. Remember, John Calipari's own stated goal is not winning games for UK, it's getting guys drafted. Allen is a bad example because he was pretty much a liability if he wasn't hitting. Hopkins would have been a great multi year player at UK with more min. Same will happen with a guy like Thiero.
Calipari recruiting profiles
Knockdown shooter
Team player
High Basketball IQ
Ability to stretch and pop
Bread for modern basketball
Long
Plays like a pogo stick
Skinny
Shooting needs improvement
Doesn’t want to play college basketball
Defensively oriented only, however defense needs improvement
** if necessary, find chubby under the rim portal players who can run and go.
Team player
High Basketball IQ
Ability to stretch and pop
Bread for modern basketball
Long
Plays like a pogo stick
Skinny
Shooting needs improvement
Doesn’t want to play college basketball
Defensively oriented only, however defense needs improvement
** if necessary, find chubby under the rim portal players who can run and go.
Cal struggles with roster management. Even if he has the depth available he doesn't like to play more than 7-8 guys. Oftentimes when there's a sub available he's still hesitant to pull one his primary players. Feels like Cal has become too apprehensive with players bc it might hurt his recruiting.
Nonsense. Hopkins showed a lot last year, I was dying to see more of him. Did you read what he said about Calipari. Any coach worth a damn could have seen he needed more minutes. And Hopkins has SCORTCHED good teams with good defenses including SEC teams.
I have no idea what you’re on there. Hopkins was totally misused by Calipari.
I don’t blame him for leaving one bit. He’d have been stupid not to.
I’m fully convinced Calipari is sabotaging the program. Hopkins is one of the reasons.
Cal's been trending down for a while and I don't care for how he does a lot of things, but I'll defend him in regards to playing 7/8 guys. Most coaches do this. If you really watch a game, the deep teams go 8 solid and have a 9th guy who can play if needed. But the majority of teams are 6/7 guys on the court and not all of them are worthy of the minutes they get.
It's one of the reasons I think the best team he had was '12. Obviously the talent, but the depth of the top 6 was in quality and then you had a shooter who came off the bench in Wiltjer and played to his role. A Vargas or Beckham spotting would take place occasionally but AD, MKG, Miller, Lamb, Teague, and Jones were as solid of a 6 man rotation as it gets in CBB. Especially when bringing in 1 and done guys--they need to play as their growth for improvement is higher.
'15 was the outlier for entire sport and we're talking historically but nothing is worse for a team then a forced rotation/premeditated minutes in most seasons, with a team like that being a rare exception.
My specific issues with this year's team is how a 7'0 kid who can protect the rim/block shots gets 0 run when rest of this team is slapdick bad defensively? Nobody is saying Ugonna is AD but he's a big who can run the floor, has good hands, and can block shots. He's not been a debacle offensively when in the game either. Thiero can't get in consistently? After watching the play from non shot making shooter who gets hurt when he or an opponent passes gas? I can find minutes for Thiero for his sake and also to protect the oft injured player who will produce same in big/limited minutes.
You know you prefer to play 2 PG's and have an example of the returning veteran being oft injured and doesn't fit the profile of the type of guard you prefer. Why not replace or add to the team in offseason? At some point, players are what they are and specifically when they are in their 4th year in CBB.
It's also not surprising that fans tend to know who can play on other teams as they spend more time watching the sport overall then a staff focused on themselves and their opponents. So when you see some of the players who the Wildcat fans wanted in Portal and didn't get a sniff from Kentucky and how they are producing for their teams, it's tough to swallow. Now a defense for Cal would be "He thought Sharpe would be here"--well that's odd considering my friend told them what he was hearing and he heard Sharpe was gone just as he and other friends of program repeatedly told Kentucky to not bother with Skyy Clark and move on quicker after that made the initial mistake of taking a commitment.
When you dig in, don't listen and then scramble to figure things out, you get disjointed teams, seasons and chaos. A coach should never sound as flustered/defeated by guys not taking shots, knowing plays, etc...and if that's the case, kick MF'ers off the team who aren't doing what they are told. Your job is to win, not baby people who refuse to do what they are told at a level that chalks it up to sayings like "We've got opportunities/time to turn this around-just up to the players". That inspires less confidence then hearing the UK media get excited over "Swaggy Cal" which leads to a minimum 2 game losing streak and lost recruiting battles.
And do better than guys that played in front of them not sure if its poor coaching or not being able to recognize better talent.
Thru ‘20 Cal did a fine job of roster construction.
And ‘21 was built on paper to be great. IJ the rim protector. Brooks coming into his soph year after showing promise the end of the previous year. Askew was the number 1 point guard in his class before he reclassified. Boston, Clarke, Whitley, Cameron, (something like that), and Sarr and Toppin. Also Mintz.
All busts. Maybe Clarke wouldn’t have been had he not been hurt?
Sarr and Toppin are the two softest, (being nice), players to wear the blue and white.
Low BB IQ for the whole team.
Then we go to ‘22. Still carrying the ‘21 busts but add Tyty and Oscar as foundation. Grady and Wheeler as transfers. Collins as next breakout star.
On paper it’s a well constructed team. Only question is the post and rebounding.
Oscar blows up and answers that question. Tyty is as good as advertised. Collins and Wheeler join the other busts. The team couldn’t guard.
Still we have a very good team and very good season. It just ended with a bad loss.
This team looked well constructed. I was in the Bahamas. I saw a lot of promise but I was concerned about the defense and rebounding other than Oscar.
I knew Oscar was going to be the focus of everyone this season and would need some help.
I was telling people that Collins and Toppin hadn’t gained a pound.
Frederick was a surprise. He didn’t play much there but when he did he was the entry passer to Oscar on the floor.
It was obvious that Wheeler was the same guy he had always been.
And my observation there was that “if Wheeler is the starting point guard by January then we are not a good team”
The problem is players not being as good as they were supposed to be. Not so much roster construction.
That’s completely on Cal and his staff. They need to evaluate these players themselves for fit. Not rely on rankings and stats.
One year is an aberration. This is 3 years straight of under performing recruits.
There’s 1 first round pick on this team and he’s falling.
Next year changes that but we are in this year.
We just do not have the players to compete at the level we want to compete at and are accustomed to competing at.
Cal has failed UK in recruiting.
And ‘21 was built on paper to be great. IJ the rim protector. Brooks coming into his soph year after showing promise the end of the previous year. Askew was the number 1 point guard in his class before he reclassified. Boston, Clarke, Whitley, Cameron, (something like that), and Sarr and Toppin. Also Mintz.
All busts. Maybe Clarke wouldn’t have been had he not been hurt?
Sarr and Toppin are the two softest, (being nice), players to wear the blue and white.
Low BB IQ for the whole team.
Then we go to ‘22. Still carrying the ‘21 busts but add Tyty and Oscar as foundation. Grady and Wheeler as transfers. Collins as next breakout star.
On paper it’s a well constructed team. Only question is the post and rebounding.
Oscar blows up and answers that question. Tyty is as good as advertised. Collins and Wheeler join the other busts. The team couldn’t guard.
Still we have a very good team and very good season. It just ended with a bad loss.
This team looked well constructed. I was in the Bahamas. I saw a lot of promise but I was concerned about the defense and rebounding other than Oscar.
I knew Oscar was going to be the focus of everyone this season and would need some help.
I was telling people that Collins and Toppin hadn’t gained a pound.
Frederick was a surprise. He didn’t play much there but when he did he was the entry passer to Oscar on the floor.
It was obvious that Wheeler was the same guy he had always been.
And my observation there was that “if Wheeler is the starting point guard by January then we are not a good team”
The problem is players not being as good as they were supposed to be. Not so much roster construction.
That’s completely on Cal and his staff. They need to evaluate these players themselves for fit. Not rely on rankings and stats.
One year is an aberration. This is 3 years straight of under performing recruits.
There’s 1 first round pick on this team and he’s falling.
Next year changes that but we are in this year.
We just do not have the players to compete at the level we want to compete at and are accustomed to competing at.
Cal has failed UK in recruiting.
Hasblow has released the new 2023 Calipari Commemorative Lego set...
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Th
Do we have a proven system?
The sad truth is Cal appears not to be able to coach up kids. The successful teams under Cal had NBA players that could win despite Cal's shortcomings. Take a look at Bill Self's teams. He is not loaded with 5-star players but can coach up players within his system.
Do we have a proven system?
If we had blown teams out like we should have these guys would have played more but they couldn’t keep their knee on the throat. So, the starters played more.
This. His emphasis on recruiting size over guards seems to come back to bite us at some point nearly every year.
And why he utterly refuses to use all his scholarships has always baffled me. He easily could add another guard to the roster, but just chooses not to. It almost seems like just plain laziness.
I don’t know if he’s sabotaging it on purpose but his inability to balance PT for the starters and the bench leads to a lack of consistency and development that makes for bad basketball. Hopkins, Allen, Matthews… Thiero next? Ugonna?
Good list. I would also add-
Will not be a great college player but has NBA potential. Will leave college still not being a great college player.
The One and Done model is not the way to build a team. Sadly, it's the only way Cal knows. Recruit for long term success- Recruit kids that actually value attending UK- Cal's mantra is so well defined it would take years to change the perception of UK (unless he resigned).
We Duke fans are in the same boat as UK fans it seems. I've noticed we've copied many of the same recruiting profiles that UK uses: Athletic, length, but few skills - can't dribble, shoot, or pass. And inflated expectations of their impact in the NBA, so they leave after 1 year regardless.
So I wouldn't blame only Cal for not building the right team, Coach K did just the same thing his last few years.
But yeah, Cal looks washed up and his desire to "keep every penny" just comes across as selfish and not holding himself to a high standard of performance.
So I wouldn't blame only Cal for not building the right team, Coach K did just the same thing his last few years.
But yeah, Cal looks washed up and his desire to "keep every penny" just comes across as selfish and not holding himself to a high standard of performance.
Yeah, it's hard especially now w/ the new transfer (portal) rule. Guys 10-13 will often leave to go where they can play but still be at a P6 school.
It's one thing to go as a 4* or even 3* knowing you're not in the rotation as a FR, but you are close; compared to knowing you aren't even close to being in the rotation.
Injury-wise, Calipari has a long history of coddling and pacifying players who have hang-nail injuries or some other phantom injury that makes them have to sit out inordinate amounts of time until they're fit enough to be present for duty. Every team now, every damn game now, is OUR effing Super Bowl. Do our kids choose to let the trainer tell them to sit out the Super Bowl or do they strap on the shoes really tight, grow some nads, and get out there with their best effort? I want to see some heart. We are all with our backs against the damn wall, and time's about up.
