LEXINGTON – There were a lot of firsts in the UK basketball world Monday – some more relevant to the hardcourt than others.
>John Calipari coached his first basketball game against real – albeit, overmatched – competition.
>Five Wildcats played their first game in white and blue – including oak trees Daniel Orton and DeMarcus Cousins.
>John Wall sat out the first of a two-game suspension for accepting illegal benefits when he was in high school.
>For the first time in his life, former UK coach Billy Gillispie pleaded guilty to drunk driving charges stemming from one summer night in Anderson County.
As you probably have surmised by now, the 107th season of Kentucky basketball will have little in common with the 106th.
Calipari had little good to say after his team’s 74-38 win over Campbellsville, a game UK never trailed in and led comfortably the entire contest. That’s OK. He’s the coach. He’s supposed to lose sleep at night because Player X is a second slow on defensive rotations and Player Y fails to hedge on ball screens. As someone who took in last year’s on-court product, the leap in size and athleticism is really quite remarkable.
Most college programs are lucky if they have two players 6’ 8’’ or taller. The Cats started two players above that mark (Cousins and Patrick Patterson) and brought three more off the bench (Orton, Josh Harrellson and Perry Stevenson). Talk about a stable of horses.
Kentucky’s frontcourt depth is second to none in the nation and will serve as a huge advantage early in the season as this team finds its legs.
Here’s a fun fact from Monday’s exhibition: In the first half against the Tigers, Kentucky had nearly as many dunks (4) as field goals allowed (5).
But post play wasn’t exactly what Calipari’s best Memphis teams were known for, and the dribble-drive offense doesn’t exactly revolve around the baby hook shot.
You can tell the young guards on this team are still looking to get comfortable in this offense. Darnell Dodson, the sophomore junior college transfer, appeared most comfortable, drawing contact in the land and hitting a pair of outside shots.
Freshman Eric Bledsoe and sophomore Darius Miller played hard but also seemed out of control at times. The team has only been practicing for 12 days now. The system hasn’t quite sunk in yet.
Kentucky finished the game with 12 assists and 23 turnovers. Calipari said when the dribble-drive has been dribble-drove at a high level those numbers will be more like 16 and 12.
It will be interesting to see what kind of leap this team makes in the next exhibition – particularly with the much-ballyhooed Wall in the lineup.
The freshman guard is expected to be the centerpiece of this offense, the largest and most deadly head of this Skylla-of-a-team.
Wall gets temporarily unshackled Friday against Clarion before returning to the NCAA timeout chair in the season opener.
If anyone can make sense of the way the NCAA doles out its punishments, well, that would be a first too.