UConn #17, UK #1 in AP Poll

[KhalidShockedTheWorld]

This report discusses John Calipari's much anticipated deployment of a two 5 man platoon teams. It will be interesting to see how the platoons are deployed, the chemistry of each platoon and whether you can mix and match between platoons after the midseason.

The platoon concept is often used in baseball where you rotate right and lefthanded batters into a position, usually an outfield position. Here we are talking about entire platoon teams.

http://espn.go.com/mens-college-basketball/story/_/id/11796228/kentucky-wildcats-arizona-wildcats-ranked-1-2-ap-preseason-poll

 

[KhalidShockedTheWorld]

More info on the Calipari platoons here, it seems like he may actually be using two 6 man platoons:



http://espn.go.com/blog/collegebasketballnation/tag/_/name/john-calipari

 

[Dominicfrank]

I'm telling you this will fail AND this is not anything Calamari intended. Here is what is going on at UK:

Calamari prays on these kids and their families touting his NBA factory as the key to their fame and money. What he is starting to get though are kids like Alex Poythress, Harrison's, etc.. who cant get drafted high enough to leave so they stay. That is poison for Cal in two ways.

1. The kids regress rather than progress under him so his factory takes an image hit which as it continues will stop the kids from begging to get in resulting in less and less impressive recruiting classes. The classes will start to consist of only the attitude kids who respond to WWW and the NBA only dream which I think started 2 years ago and is only getting worse from here. Gone are the kids like Anthony Davis, Brandon KNight, John Wall.

2. Further exposure to his lack of coaching ability. To be fair, no coach can make a platoon system work especially with all those me first kids but Calamari is the LAST one that can preach team work and unity. This is going to be a train wreck.


All of this will ultimately result in him leaving UK for the NBA. I can only hope that he takes a job that an NBA team wanted Ollie for. Cleveland and OKC are the top two gigs in the NBA who are going to need coaches within the next 2 years, lets hope Calamari gets one and Ollie turns down the other.

 

[KhalidShockedTheWorld]

I am also skeptical about the platoon system, but for other reasons. I think he may have overrecruited. You can only recruit and play so many guys. Some guys have to come off the bench and play roles, and it is harder to do that with guys who are me first main man players. Poythress is the only good established role player they have, but he will likely start in one of the platoons instead of be a 6th man.

If it works, it could revolutionize the sport, but I don't think it will, because of chemistry issues. We shall see...............

 

[Dominicfrank]

If he recruited 12 freshman to this team I would agree but his issues aren't that he over-recruited its that Poythress, Harrisons, WCS, Johnson, Lee DIDNT leave.

 

[KhalidShockedTheWorld]

Originally posted by Dominicfrank:
his issues aren't that he over-recruited its that Poythress, Harrisons, WCS, Johnson, Lee DIDNT leave.

But isn't that overrecruiting? You recruit to fill positions, but if guys come back, the positions are filled. To me it is overrecruiting whether you recruit 12 freshmen or have 6 freshmen and 6 sophomores/juniors coming back who aren't ready for the NBA.

In basketball, you have 5 starting positions and 5 possible bench positions, at most. If you recruit 10 guys who are starters instead of 5 starters and 5 guys who can help on the bench, you are overrecruiting. The ages and classes do not matter.

 

[Dominicfrank]

You are right but in this case he recruited these guys and they committed in most cases thinking these guys were leaving. Calamari failed to get his freshman pushed to the NBA so I call that a failure of concept/coaching rather than over recruiting. He plans on re-upping each year with freshman so having sophomores is not part of the plan.

 

[TateGorgeous]

I would say it's both - Calamari failed to coach up his freshman recruits - and continued to con new recruits with the promise of an NBA dream - yet those prospects are blocked by and have to share minutes with prior recruits who stayed. Calamari now has a glut of players and has to ration minutes.

Not. So. Fast.

Ultimately whether you call a player a starter or a bench guy, if he's playing reduced minutes because of a glut of talent, he won't be happy. New recruits will become more difficult to con when they see the draft position fall for all these prospects playing reduced minutes.

Calamari is attempting to present the program as a place where you can have 2 units, each with 5 "starters".

Sorry squid, it's still 10 sorry suckers not playing starter minutes.

This post was edited on 11/2 11:16 AM by TateGorgeous