John Calipari isn't lost or confused. He knows a young team will have growing pains
You think John Calipari hasn't been through this before? The basketball lifer, who has been coaching college basketball for more than 30 years, regularly recruits the best high school prospects and molds them into first-round NBA draft picks as teenagers. This is who he is. This is what he does. Calipari knows very intimately what it's like to take a very raw and talented freshman and develop him into someone who can perform at the highest level in the NBA. Of course he knows what it's like for young players and young teams to run into a brick wall early in a college basketball season. Calipari isn't lost or confused after Arkansas' ugly and lopsided loss to Virginia. He knows what this process looks like and what it entails. He talked about this after Sunday's defeat.
Calipari said a few particularly interesting things about the process of teaching young players. One is that "this may not be your game." He meant that for young players who were used to dominating in high school and doing pretty much whatever they wanted on the court because they were so athletically superior to the other players on the floor, the adjustment is significant in college basketball. Against Virginia and other good teams, these high school all-stars - now in the college game - aren't going to get to the rim at will. They aren't going to simply take over games. There's a strong big man from the opposing team who will challenge them. There's a quality defensive stopper who will take away their dribble. Virginia has solid defensive players who made the game hard for Arkansas' freshmen. "This may not be your game" is a way of saying, "You might have to pass the ball and find your teammate and make him the centerpiece of the offense." Getting into the mindset - the habit - of finding the solution to a problem is more important than doing something on your own or thinking you are always the best answer to a problem. That's what Calipari is trying to get across to his young players.
Another thing Calipari said after the Virginia loss is that his players weren't fully locked in. He explained by noting that they might have been a step or half-second slow on defense because they were still thinking about the layup they just missed at the other end of the floor. Calipari is trying to hammer it into his players that they have to forget about the previous play and simply focus on the next one. It's a simple concept, but for young players, it can be hard to instantly apply it. It will take time for these freshmen to absorb and fully internalize such lessons. These are the growing pains of a young team, but again, John Calipari has done this a million times. He isn't confused. He knows what he needs to say. It's going to be interesting to see how quickly these freshman can truly absorb what their coach is saying.
