John Calipari says Kentucky is "tweaking some things" prior to postseason

The tweak is back for John Calipari leading up to Kentucky’s run in the SEC and NCAA Tournaments. After hinting at a potential tweak in the works following Kentucky’s loss at Tennessee two weeks ago, it appears Calipari has followed through on the possibility.

During his weekly call-in radio show, the UK head coach said that despite his confidence in the team going into March, there’s always room for improvement. And to make that happen, he’s made a few tweaks in practice this week he believes will “protect” the team.

While he didn’t dive into the specifics, he did say one of the tweaks was a position change for a player. He said the change came after seeing Bryce Hopkins struggle a bit at the four against Arkansas, adding that he put him in a position that was “not fair to him.”

“I just want us to keep getting better,” Calipari said. “We’re tweaking some things that I wanted to do, we moved one player to a different position just to protect us. I put Bryce (Hopkins) at the four last game, not fair to him. We haven’t practiced him at the four. I wanted to try to get him in the game, and I told him it’s not fair. ‘The position we had you in, you were really effective.'”

Does that mean he’s begun working Hopkins out at the four to back up Keion Brooks Jr. and Jacob Toppin in emergency situations? He doesn’t outright say it, but that appears to be the plan. Or rotate him in at the three and four, at the very least, hoping he’ll provide a similar spark to the one he gave against LSU last week. It’s also just one of a few tweaks he says he’s made.

Why the late-year changes? Calipari doesn’t want to be caught sticking with the same things that worked five years ago. He’s confident in this team’s ability to make a postseason run, and he wants to give them all of the tools necessary to do so, no matter how late in the process we are.

“You don’t stop being curious,” Calipari said. “When you’re coaching, it’s not a lesson plan that I used five years ago, it’s ‘OK, this team is different.’ Everybody says the same thing, ‘Wow they’re fun to watch. Wow, have they gotten better. Wow, are they resilient, they fight. Oh, and that kid in the middle is pretty good.'”

Following Kentucky’s loss at Tennessee two weeks back, Calipari said potential changes were coming.

“It’s not about peaking too early, it’s ‘Do we have to do things a little bit different to get us moving?'” Calipari said at the time. “I watched the beginning of that game, and I was happy about how we started. We were in a pretty good stretch. … We practice, maybe I tweak things in practice. Maybe I tweak the offense a little bit. But I still have one of those teams, and I say it. We have one of those teams, let’s go. Let’s get to the end and see what happens.”

Now, it appears those changes are here.