Tue Feb 09 2010
LEXINGTON - UK coach John Calipari said after Monday’s relatively pedestrian 74-38 win over Campbellsville that he was no longer going to be Mr. Nice Guy...he was going to be Mr. Mean Guy and Mr. Demanding Guy to get his Wildcats to play tougher and with more intensity.
“He got their attention this week,” Clarion, Pa., University coach Ron Righter said of Calipari and the Wildcats Friday night after his over-matched Golden Eagles were demolished, 117-52, in an exhibition game at Rupp Arena. “That’s a different ball club than the one that played Monday night.”
Different? Yeah, you could say that. Righter continued...
“In my 35 years of coaching, that’s as skilled a team as I’ve seen,” he said of Kentucky. “That’s as talented a team as he has had playing that system in the last 20 to 30 years at this early stage. It’s just a matter of time people. You are going to see something special.”
What impressed Righter, arguably, the most, and everyone else in Rupp for that matter, was the way Calipari already has his veterans mixing so unselfishly with the freshmen.
“What I saw tonight was the veterans blend in and give the 100 percent that he (Calipari) demands,” Righter said. “There was a nice energy and nice team play out of every one of those guys. I was very impressed with everyone who came off of their bench, with the way they played hard. He definitely got their attention this week, and he got ours.”
The numbers – those eye-opening numbers – back up Righter’s praise. And we might start with the fact that it sure didn’t hurt the Wildcats’ cause to see freshman point guard John Wall on the court after sitting out the Campbellsville game due to a pesky AAU coach, agent, violation deal. All Wall did was lead all scorers with 27 points, while adding nine assists, four rebounds and four turnovers in 28 minutes. Wall was 10 of 14 from the field and 6 of 7 at the free throw line.
“He makes us different, obviously,” Calipari said of Wall. “Here’s what I appreciated: He (Wall) was saying to me, ‘We’ve got to get Patrick (Patterson) some shots here, we’ve got to get DeMarcus (Cousins) the ball.’ That’s a leader. John knows he has a feel for this team. He wants to keep everybody happy, wants to keep everybody involved.”
“John Wall is the real deal,” Righter said. “I hope you can keep him a year or two because he’s in another league.”
Cousins added 20 points, including 9 of 12 shooting from the field, and six rebounds.
Patterson added 14 points, six rebounds and three blocked shots, though Calipari said the junior big man does not yet appear comfortable in his offense.
“Patrick is still not quite in sync with what we need,” Calipari said. “Part of it is I have to figure out exactly how to play him and get the most out of him, and him to get the most out of what we’re trying to do. We want him to be our best player.”
Darius Miller, Darnell Dodson and Ramon Harris added 11 points apiece for Kentucky. Miller added seven assists and two steals; Dodson added nine rebounds and four assists, and Harris had seven rebounds. And senior forward Perry Stevenson impressed Calipari with a relatively quiet eight points and two boards in 19 minutes.
But Calipari said it wasn’t those glittering offensive numbers that impressed him the most, it was the Wildcats’ defense.
Kentucky held Clarion to just 23 percent shooting from the field on 15 of 63. The Wildcats have so much height, so much wing span, and are so strong athletically, that when the Clarion players drove the lane, the arms of the Kentucky players looked like a ceiling fan running at high speed.
“They are a very long team,” Righter said of Kentucky. “They are probably the longest team I’ve seen in a long time.”
UK shot, by the way, 59.2 percent from the outside on 42-of-71 attempts.
UK turned the ball over 12 times, to 23 for the Golden Eagles.
“This was defense,” Calipari said. “We defended. And we got tired a little bit at the end and broke down a few times. But I’m not changing. The bar has been raised. One of the things I was trying to get them to do was continue to run so they could see what a team would do when they get tired. And Clarion got tired.”
The only three UK players without a lot to brag about Friday were freshman center Daniel Orton, freshman guard Eric Bledsoe and sophomore guard DeAndre Liggins. Orton suffered an unspecified chest injury early in the game and played only four minutes, Bledsoe sat out with a sprained ankle, and Liggins - for the second straight game - did not play at all.
Calipari would not say why Liggins did not play.
“As you get to know me, I’ll never throw kids under the bus,” Calipari said, marking yet another stark contrast from the most recent UK coach. “I’ll take responsibility myself. I don’t want to do anything that hurts a young person. So let’s just talk about the kids who played.”
The Wildcats will certainly get a much stiffer test in their regular-season opener this Friday when they host Morehead State at 6:30 p.m.
That will be the second and final game Wall will have to sit out due to his eligibility issues. He will return for the Miami (Ohio) game on Nov. 16 at Rupp.
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