Notes from UK’s Saturday Morning and Afternoon Practices

All of the hype surrounded Friday night’s Big Blue Madness festivities. The lights, the introductions, the glitz, the all-star game caliber scrimmage and of course John Calipari’s State of the Bluegrass address.

However, if you wanted to get a first look at what this Kentucky team is really going to be like, than Saturday’s morning and afternoon practice sessions are really where you wanted to be.

The morning session was offensive oriented, involving tons of layups and jump shots. If you have the ball, you penetrate until you get stopped, when you are stopped you kick it out and they shoot. One pass, that’s it.

Calipari wants to see who can get to the rim. He wants to see who can shoot the jumper. This is why they are limiting their possessions to one pass right now. If the penetrator kicks the ball out to you, than you are expected to pull right away.

They ran 5-on-0, 3-on-2, and 2-on-1 fast breaks, all with this same philosophy. No swinging around the perimeter. If you get the ball you are shooting it.

They tracked layups missed and three-point percentage. They missed 73 layups, they shot a bunch of them, and shot 29-percent from beyond the women’s three-point line.

The afternoon session was more defensive oriented and they focused on rebounding. They have four guys crashing the glass on the offensive end and Calipari expects them to be the best rebounding team in the country.

Calipari talked a little bit about the Dribble-Drive offense and he basically said it is the Princeton offense on steroids. Only difference is that this offense relies on the dribble much more than the pass.

It resembles a four-out-one-in set and positions one through four are all interchangeable. The five roams around the paint and stays opposite of the ball at all times.

Everything is based on the penetrator getting the ball to the paint and then the rest of the offense reading the ball and their defender.

For example, if John Wall penetrates from the wing, there will be a man in the corner. That man reads the drive, if the drive is stopped, he then reads his man and chooses whether to go baseline for the backdoor or to pop out for the jumper.

The “big” stays opposite because he is there for a lob if his defender leaves him to stop penetration or he is there for the putback.

All positions are interchangeable because as soon as one man leaves his spot another is there to take his place.

One thing I took away from Saturday’s practice was their unreal length. They are long at every single position. Expect them to block a ton of shots and it is going to be very difficult for opposing teams to rebound the basketball.

John Wall and Eric Bledsoe are freaks athletically. They took turns blocking each other’s shots on the backboard. It seriously looked like a game of ping pong.

Wall and Bledsoe are the only two point guards on this team, but expect them to see the court together. Just like Coach Calipari said, if my best two players are centers I am going to find a way to get them both on the court. The same applies here.

DeMarcus Cousins could be an absolute beast but I was a little surprised at his body language. At times he mopes around and just goes through the motions. But, there is no denying that he too is unbelievably athletic.

Daniel Orton is going to be really good. He is so fluid and fundamental. They were really cautious about his knee, though, and told him if he felt any pain at all to sit out.

Darnell Dodson and Jon Hood were not too impressive. Hood may not contribute much this year but I expect him to be a player eventually. Dodson, on the other hand, should catch on.

The coaching staff is treating Patrick Patterson like he is a guard. When they split the guards and bigs into groups, he went with the guards every single time. Patterson simply beasted it by the way.

Of the other returnees, Perry Stevenson and Ramon Harris both struggled. But, I was surprised with how comfortable Josh Harrellson looked. Darius Miller is going to have a lot of success with that little floater of his from 12-feet out.

One thing this team is missing is their ability to shoot the ball from the perimeter. Simply put, they struggle. They are going to need Dodson to get more comfortable in the offense and Harrellson will also be relied upon to make some outside shots.

Calipari is constantly encouraging from the sidelines and you could tell that some of the returning guys reacted to this encouragement as if they were getting yelled at. Every single time Calipari was quick to point out that he doesn’t yell, he just talks loud. He is simply there to teach them and make them better.

I’ll close with a quick story that Calipari told about Rick Pitino from back in 1996.

He mentioned how much of a nutcase, in a good way, and overpreparer that Pitino is. Before their game early in the ’96 season, he told a radio show that he was going to play box-and-one and triangle-and-two against Kentucky.

Derek Anderson told him earlier this year that Pitino caught wind of this interview and because of that his staff looked at all of UMass’ game tapes to find the defense and prepared for it all week long.

Then UMass didn’t play it at all.

I just thought it was a interesting story and it definitely throws another log onto the Calipari-Pitino rivalry fire.