Starting Five Scenarios for the 2017-18 Kentucky Basketball Team

by:Alex Holder•10/14/17•

@Alex_Holder_KSR

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Photo by Quinn Foster | UK Athletics[/caption] The Kentucky basketball team has many starting lineup options, but what does Cal want to do? Does he want to go big or small ball? Does he want to play fast or zone up? The great thing is that Kentucky can do all of it. There are four different options for Kentucky's starting five. The first question is do they want to play big ball? If they want to play big, the Cats could look like this:

G 6'5" Hami Diallo
G 6'6" Shai Gilgeous-Alexander
F 6'9" Kevin Knox
C 6'10" Sacha Killya-Jones
C 6'11" Nick Richards

Now I highly doubt that Cal is going to play Sacha and Nick together at the same time, but it's possible. Conversely, they could play small ball. That would look something like this:

G 6'0" Quade Green
G 6'5" Hami Diallo
G 6'6" Shai Gilgeous-Alexander
F 6'9" Kevin Knox
C 6'8" P.J. Washington

Even though it's technically small ball, that lineup is not very small. Kentucky has another option: play fast. If the Cats want to play fast and out in transition, this looks like the best five for that:

G 6'0" Quade Green
G 6'5" Hami Diallo
F 6'9" Wenyen Gabriel or (would've probably been Jarred Vanderbilt)
F 6'9" Kevin Knox
C 6'10" Sacha Killya-Jones

The last, most unlikely lineup we could see is a zone lineup. The chances Calipari will use a zone is pretty slim to none, but it's awfully enticing for this team.