I know I've been guilty of slamming John Calipari a million times in online blogs. Many of us have given him unflattering names and descriptions. I've done it again by giving him the title, "Master Clown."
I created that name from watching plenty of his games, and John is a very animated coach. I see animation as a major feature of clowns, but in reality maybe John just knows how to communicate to high school and college players.
(insert segue)
We are about ready to embark on another great year of Kansas basketball in the Big 12 Conference. This is the time of year where Coach Self starts focusing playing time into a smaller and smaller group. This is the time of year where players that didn't quite make the cut get placed away in the deep freeze on the far end of the bench and rust away.
There are several quality players that might want to grab their winter coats about now. Not because of the current frigid temperatures outside in Lawrence, but because of the frigid temperatures coming inside, at the end of the bench.
What players are bound for chilling temperatures and rusted joints?
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Svi. Svi has shown lots of promise, but he hasn't shown enough immediate ability to contribute on a consistent basis.
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Brannen. Brannen had one game showing how hot he can be, but hasn't shown it again. His defense lacks intensity, and he hasn't had a steal all year.
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Hunter. Hunter has shown some promise during a few moments while other times seems a bit lost and slow in the game. His timing seems a bit off, and this has kept him from stacking up bigger numbers in his brief moments of play in the area where he was dominant at Arkansas; shot blocking.
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Landen. Landen is a starter who is slowly fading off the screen. He (and everyone else) has been awaiting the inevitable, for Cliff to come on stronger and take his minutes away. Will he take most of his minutes? Good chance of that happening, but Landen will surely be counted on in parts of the coming season, when Cliff finds himself in foul trouble or unmotivated play.
(insert chorus)
This leads me back to John Calipari, and his platoon system used to parse playing time.
I've never given John credit for being able to win with a stacked deck. I've always maintained that a group of this much talent can probably win 25+ games a year being self-coached. We'll never know if that is true or not.
But I am about to break new ground here and give John credit for convincing his all-star troops that playing a mere 20 minutes a game can be a positive. Meanwhile, the rest of college basketball coaches has to plead with high school recruits and guarantee them a starting position with all the playing time minutes they can handle.
When Coach Self was focused more on 3 and 4-star recruits, he seemed quite proud to lay down the law to the recruiting world: "if you come to Kansas, you'll have to earn your playing time. There are no guarantees. You'll have to steal minutes from experienced players who will have a preference for their experience." We all see where that got us. CS suddenly found himself in a recruiting slump.
CS finally broke down and changed his strategy. He was sick and tired of spending all that energy in top recruits and rarely landing them. None of us know what he tells recruits today (exactly). We know he has softened his positions, and we have seen many recent 5-star recruits start as freshmen.
This all makes me wonder. Has he committed playing time to certain players? Right now my focus is on Wayne and Perry. These two seem to often bring the softest play to games (not always). Are they playing under the same high risk other players are playing under?
Are we going to experience another year where we rust away much of our deep bench, ending the possibility we can use an effective bench later? Will we experience more transfers after March?
We were all shocked at Conner Frankamp's transfer. No one saw that coming. We all thought there was a possibility he could be "put on ice" for another year. He isn't the exact profile player we look for in a perimeter player, and the one enticing area of being a sharp shooter hadn't come to fruition. But Conner did have plenty to offer us. First, he represented needed depth at PG and the 2. He is a different approach from what we have now. He was less athletic and was small, but he offered a good amount of basketball IQ, something we often lack on the perimeter. If he was instructed to do something, he did it. He was disciplined.
Conner was (and is) a Kansas Jayhawk diehard. But he is also a tough competitor, and he couldn't stand the thought of rusting away at the end of a bench, even if the bench was at Kansas. Conner left for two main reasons: first, we ended up being lopsided with too many talented perimeter players, and most of these players fit a profile of what CS liked to recruit (and play) and Conner was not in that profile. Second, Conner had already experienced a year of Jayhawk "deep freeze." I believe both of these factors made a compelling statement concerning his future as a Jayhawk.
We've lost plenty of talented players to transfer over the past years. We can shrug our heads and turn up our noses and proclaim that these players just couldn't cut it. But the facts are the facts. When we lose talent that has been at Kansas for a year or more we are losing experienced depth. We lose a few players early to the NBA, but when you combine it with the players we lose to transfers, we end up in a situation where we are never able to put an experienced team on the floor again.
I don't know what John Calipari does to get his 9 McDonald's All Americans on board for playing half games, but he has now earned some coaching respect from me for making this approach work. Most of his players do not come from the State of Kentucky, and were not diehard Kentucky fans, yet they seem more flexible for sharing playing time and in the process have become a tighter team because of their sharing attitudes.
What will make Kentucky a great team come March will be their depth. All of their talented players received plenty of minutes throughout the year, and will be ready (and fresh) in March. Will we be able to say the same? Or will we "ice away" several players now, only to not have options in March and face more defections after the season has ended?
