John Calipari: "I tweaked a couple things and I'm liking it."

On3 imageby:Jack Pilgrim03/14/22

John Calipari and the Kentucky basketball program have moved on from the Wildcats’ disappointing loss to Tennessee in the SEC Tournament. Now, it’s about getting ready for the team’s trip to Indianapolis for the NCAA Tournament.

With the bracket revealed and matchups set, Kentucky has begun game-planning for its opening-round matchup vs. Saint Peter’s on Thursday. From there the Wildcats could potentially face No. 7 seed Murray State in the Round of 32. After a rough showing in Tampa in the semifinals, Calipari decided to hit reset to prepare for his team’s trip to Indianapolis, starting with something he hasn’t done since 2014.

Kentucky scrimmaged in practice. Despite the injury risk that comes with full-court, full-contact five-on-five scrimmages, Calipari determined it was necessary to get his team’s swagger back going into NCAA Tournament play.

The results? Positive. Quite positive, actually.

“I said, ‘We’ve got to play free and loose, so how can I help?’ Part of it is, what I did in practice today — we had a great practice today. Oh my gosh,” Calipari said during his call-in radio show on Monday. “We scrimmaged for an hour and 15 minutes. It was controlled, but we scrimmaged. It was body-to-body. Because of all the injuries, we haven’t had time to really zone in on what we’re trying to do in this with this new team. But it was dangerous. You know how I am at the end of the year.”

The best news for Calipari? No injuries. Despite playing with fire a bit with March Madness set to begin this week, it was a clean practice for the Wildcats.

“We went two hours today, but an hour and 15 minutes (of it) was up and down scrimmaging,” Calipari said. “It was live, they were going at it and there was a score. When it was done I said, ‘You know what? What’s good for me today?’ They go, ‘What?’ ‘No one got injured.’ They all hit the floor like, ‘Agh.'”

During the two-hour practice, the Kentucky head coach tried a few new things — tweaks, if you will.

“Getting them with speed and the ball movement — I tweaked some things today, folks,” Calipari said. “I tweaked a couple things and I’m liking it. I think they’re liking it.”

Practice tomorrow will consist of more scrimmaging and some fine-tuning of the tweaks.

“We go tomorrow, it’s going to be a shortened version,” Calipari said. “And there’s no way I’m going to scrimmage that long, but we’re going to scrimmage a little bit and just reaffirm the tweaks and the stuff we’re trying to do, how we’re trying to play.”

Calipari has seen what this team is at its peak and its dominance when it’s firing on all cylinders. His mission now is to get them back to playing at that level during NCAA Tournament play. It started with the tweaks during Monday’s scrimmage.

“This morning when I woke up, it was like, ‘You’ve got to get them scrimmaging and let them get their feet underneath them. We’ve been beat up and now we’re together again. Well, let’s get this where we’re more in sync.’ I went with it. … We just need that, we need to do that.

“We’re one of those teams that if we’re playing the way we play and that ball is moving and popping and driving and people are moving for positions and it opens up lanes, we’re just one of those teams. But when the ball stops or someone who has too many bounces, we’re not the same team. We’re good, but we’re not one of those teams. So we’ve got to get back to that.”

Part of it is building back confidence and showing his team what it was when it crushed North Carolina in Las Vegas, Kansas in Lawrence and Tennessee at Rupp Arena. To do that, Calipari had the video crew compile a ten-minute highlight clip of the Wildcats’ best moments throughout the season, a reminder of just how unstoppable this team can be.

“Man, I’ve got a terrific group of young people,” Calipari said. “It’s amazing that they care about each other, they know what they have to do for our team to win. They respect each other. I showed them a 10-minute highlight tape today before we practiced because we’ve got to get this swag back. The way you get it back is by playing free and loose. I said, ‘How can I help you?’ Know what they said? ‘Coach, this is on me. I’ve got to get in the right frame of mind.’ And I said, ‘Well, we’re gonna — I’m gonna tweak a couple things. You’re going to see what I’m going to do to make sure that we can do this.'”

The results?

“They were good. I mean, today was — sheesh.”

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