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KENTUCKY
Continued from Page 22
It won 38 straight games.
These new kids certainly come stocked with stars on their resumes.
Knox, Washington, Diallo, Richards, Vanderbilt and Green all were
five-star prospects. Knox was rated the Number 10 recruit overall;
Washington, 12; Vanderbilt, 17; Richards, 19.
It’s true that Duke had four of the top eight recruits. Duke always
seems to come away with the best recruiting class. Duke has also
been in the Final Four only twice in Kentucky’s Calipari era. (Full
disclosure: The Blue Devils won the national championship both
times.)
The lesson is, five-star freshmen – promising as they are – don’t
necessarily guarantee anything. And, since five-star freshmen
rarely become sophomores, the job of turning a group of them into
a productive, winning unit over a six-month period is daunting.
Since we don’t know who’ll start and who will play what position,
it’s almost impossible to predict what this group will do. Among
the things we can predict, however, on a Calipari team:
• Those who can play defense will get the bulk of playing time.
• Those who can hit their free throws will be on the court in the
last 10 minutes of close games.
• Those who rebound with two hands, and hit the floor on 50-50
balls, will play.
• And those who can score will be a precious commodity on a
team of uncertain shooting skills.
Kentucky has had many fine shooters in the past eight years,
from Eric Bledsoe and Brandon Knight, to Doron Lamb and Kyle
Wiltjer, to Aaron Harrison and Devin Booker, to Jamal Murray and
Malik Monk. Calipari likes defensive teams that can rebound the
ball and run the court, but he knows that if nobody can put the ball
in the basket, there’s no defense good enough to win. If nobody
can shoot from outside, the Wildcats will face a lot of sagging zones
that will clog up the middle, thwarting Kentucky’s hopes of quick
passes, strong screens and slashing drives to the hoop.
Somebody has to shoot over those zones to make opposing
coaches reconsider how to defend the Cats. Will that be Knox?
Baker? Diallo? Gilgeous-Alexander? Washington? Green? Maybe
Vanderbilt?
You see the problem of predicting how this team will do. You
see why they were all photographed in shadows.
The season opens in these shadows.