Chin Coleman on stopping Alabama and Brandon Miller
Kentucky Basketball had one last practice in Lexington on Friday afternoon before the team’s departure out of Blue Grass Airport for Saturday’s marquee SEC game at Alabama. If today’s practice went anything like recent day-before-game practices, the Wildcats scrimmaged for at least an hour, something John Calipari never asked his teams to do until this season.
“Now, you understand that’s dangerous,” Calipari explained earlier this week. “I’ve never done it before. This team needs it. You know why? We look out of sync. We’re not smooth. We’ve got to. And if somebody steps on something, we’ll have to deal with it. But that’s with this team.”
Before Friday’s practice which may or may not have had an hourlong scrimmage, Calipari sent assistant coach Chin Coleman out to answer questions about the team and tomorrow’s top-10 opponent in Tuscaloosa. Coleman couldn’t provide updates regarding the injuries to Lance Ware or CJ Fredrick because he hadn’t yet been briefed before practice, but Coleman had lots to say about Kentucky’s matchup.
To start, he was asked if Alabama’s style of play changed since Kentucky won both meetings a year ago, to which he replied, “They pretty much run the same thing. They play the analytics. They want to take a bunch of threes or layups or lobs or dunks. They don’t play the middle game. No middle shots, no floaters, no pull-ups. They pretty much stick to the analytics of the game and that’s how they play.”
Here’s a visual of Alabama’s commitment to threes and layups:
Coleman added, “They want to play fast. Transition, they want the possessions in probably the high 80s, and they spread you and they play one-on-one and they look for matchups. They look for favorable matchups and pretty much the same as they played last year.”
Alabama is currently ranked second nationally in tempo with nearly 80 possessions per game.
Last season in Rupp Arena, Alabama’s quick pace jumped out to a double-digit lead over Kentucky in the first half, only for Kentucky to erase the deficit and steal the lead before halftime. Remember John Calipari’s great line at halftime after Kentucky weathered Bama’s three-point storm? “They made nine threes and they’re down one. What are they going to make, 18? That’s fine, they’ll be down two and the game ends.”
On Friday, Coleman looked back on Kentucky’s nine-point win in that game and what it took to turn the Tide. The plan is to defend Alabama the same way again this year: stop the three.
“I think that it was just plan A, and plan B was a better way to make our plan A work,” he explained. “That’s kind of like, when you play Alabama, is defend the three-point line.
“We have a number that we want to try to keep them at, in terms of field goal attempts from three and field goal makes from three. So, we have a number that we want to try to hold them to if we can, and I think that the second half, if I’m not mistaken, the kid (Keon) Ellis, he got off to a really good start, he couldn’t miss.”
Ellis hit seven three-pointers, including his first five attempts to start the game. His fifth put Alabama up 11 points only 11 minutes into the game in Lexington. He is now with the Sacramento Kings, thankfully.
Still, Alabama’s style of play is tough to defend no matter the personnel, and Nate Oats won’t change it up.
“The one thing about Alabama, though, is they’re not going to change their style,” said Coleman. “They’re going to continue to play the way that they play and that’s to take quick strikes and if they’re hitting those then it’s a problem, but if they’re not making those then you can always find yourself in the game.”
Coleman on Brandon Miller, Alabama’s star freshman
Keon Ellis is gone but now Alabama has true freshman Brandon Miller lighting up the scoreboard for the Crimson Tide A five-star small forward, Miller averages 19.1 points per game in his debut season while shooting over 45 percent from three with seven attempts per game.
Coleman, who recruited Miller out of the Class of 2022 for Kentucky, said, “He’s playing well. He has the ultimate green light. They run a lot of different things for him to get him looks and they put the ball in his hand, they play him off the ball, they run a lot of screening actions for him, they put him in a bunch of ball screens. He’s playing well. And if he’s obviously got it going and they utilize him more; his usage rate is pretty high.
“But it determines game by game, like if he’s got it going, then they’re going to put the ball in his hands and they’re going to play through him. We have a plan A and a Plan B for how we’re going to defend him this game and hopefully, we can do what’s needed to be to kind of neutralize him a little bit.”
Keep the irrelevant guys irrelevant
Revealing his message to the players, Coleman shared Kentucky’s defensive strategy to “keep the irrelevant guys irrelevant the relevant guys relevant.”
He said, “We want to make sure that we keep the main thing the main thing. I know I’m talking our basketball speak with a lot of my terminology because I deal with the defense a lot, but–we want to keep the relevant guys relevant and the irrelevant guys irrelevant and if we do that, we’ll be fine.”
Brandon Miller falls into the relevant category.
Hear more from Coleman, who is also relevant.
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