Following 2 blowout wins, Kentucky MBB is finding its once-lost swagger

After a disappointing road loss to Notre Dame over two weeks ago, Kentucky head coach John Calipari told a quick anecdote about how this current team contrasts from some of his most successful.

“Had a friend of mine call me and say ‘Your teams have always had a swagger. They’ve had a swagger in the warm-up line; they had a swagger,’” Calipari said. “‘When I watched the Notre Dame game I didn’t see it.’”

What was clearly absent against the Fighting Irish has been reborn since then. Kentucky has decimated its last two opponents, beating North Carolina in Las Vegas by 29 and then Western Kentucky in Rupp Arena by 35. Not exactly championship contenders, but a significant step-up in competition compared to seven consecutive “tune-up” games.

Two games are still only two games, and a much larger sample size that stretches into conference play will confirm or deny it, but Kentucky has at least scrounged up some of the swagger that Calipari teams of old constantly exuded.

“After the Notre Dame game, Coach emphasized the word ‘swagger’,” Jacob Toppin told reporters on Tuesday. “And I feel like since that day everyone has tried to compose a swagger and it’s helping a lot. Everyone’s confidence is building from that in practice. We’re making shots. So we found a way to translate that to the games; and sharing the ball, having that swagger, running up and down the floor, bringing that energy, is going to provide you with the shots that you need and you just got to knock it down. And I believe like everyone has that confidence to knock down the shots now because that swagger.”

So what’s changed so dramatically in such a short amount of time? More ball movement has been emphasized in recent weeks, but according to Toppin, UK was more focused on what the final outcome might be as opposed to improving as a whole.

“It wasn’t there,” Toppin said about Kentucky’s swagger heading into the Notre Dame game. “I don’t think we were really worried about the swagger. I think we were worried about just winning basketball games. We were too focused on that, that it led to us being very cautious with what we do, and you can’t play cautious because that’s when you make mistakes.

“After that game, we realized that we just need to go out there and play basketball, play for one another and share the ball, and that’s what we did the last two games and you’ve seen the outcome.”

To steal a page from the still-being-written book of Cal-isms, confidence breeds competence. When you play with confidence and are more concerned about playing through your teammates than yourself, success will follow along with it.

“I feel like we didn’t have it early in the season because we were still figuring each other out,” TyTy Washington said on Tuesday of finding the team’s swagger. “Figuring out how to play with each other. Still trying to figure out how to score, play offense and defense. We were just really finding who we are as a team.

“I feel like to this point, we kinda figured out who we are and what we’re about. So that’s just an easy opportunity for us to focus on our swagger. Just get everybody confidence, take pressure off of our shoulders now that we know how we’re going to be playing and what guys expect from each other.”

A large part of Kentucky’s success over the last two outings simply comes down to hitting shots they’d been missing. The ‘Cats are shooting just 33.3 percent from beyond the arc on the entire season, but are 17-35 (48.6 percent) over its previous two. Each made triple builds more swagger into this roster.

Kentucky is establishing confidence, which in turn is rekindling some lost juice. Maintaining that confidence will be the next step. But the foundation to pull that off is now firmly present.