With an array of high school stars and talented returners, John Calipari should be able to roll the ball to midcourt and watch this year’s Kentucky team walk to the Final Four, right?
Unfortunately, it doesn’t work that way.
Playing their first game as a team, the Kentucky Wildcats defeated hometown rival Transylvania in an exhibition on Wednesday. The matchup may have ended in a 97-53 blowout, but there’s no question the Cats have a long way to go.
“We have a lot of work to do,” Calipari said. “I wish it was easy (to) just put a group of guys together and they just play. That’s not how it works.”
Calipari’s familiar refrain of “I like my team” has made regular appearances throughout the preseason, but so too have reminders of everything UK has to do to live up to its pedigree. Calipari won’t be the lone sobering voice anymore.
“The good news is everybody in this building saw it,” Calipari said. “Anybody that watched it on TV saw it.”
Four minutes into the game, the message Calipari has been trying to deliver was poignantly received. UK fell behind 11-4 as the bigger Cats settled for long distance shots rather than attack the smaller Pioneers. Meanwhile, Transylvania was pouring in threes and showing the Cats offensive and defensive looks they hadn’t seen yet.
Resuming a series between two teams that had not played for a century, that’s exactly what Transylvania coach Brian Lane had hoped to do.
“We approached this game as a way to try to help the University of Kentucky get ready for those early games,” Lane said. “What we wanted to do was some things offensively that they hadn’t guarded in practice.”
It was at that point when Calipari inserted Michael Kidd-Gilchrist, the freshman with the reputation for hard work and intensity. Within three minutes, UK had taken a six-point lead.
“He was the difference in what happened,” Calipari said. “He did what I knew he would do.”
Even though he didn’t score much in the first half and was limited to eight minutes after picking up a pair of fouls, Kidd-Gilchrist set the tone for the run that carried the team to a 14-point halftime lead.
In the second half, when UK took its game up another notch, Kidd-Gilchrist was the driving force yet again. Over the final 20 minutes, he had 15 points, four assists and four rebounds. He energized the crowd with his hustle, his open-floor ability and a high-flying dunk that drew an audible gasp from the 21,024 in attendance at Rupp Arena.
After the game was over, Kidd-Gilchrist emerged from the locker room to speak to the assembled media with ice packs on both his knees. The way he played on Wednesday is the way he always has and he can’t remember a game after which he didn’t have bumps and bruises that required treatment.
As much of a sparkplug as Kidd-Gilchrist was off the bench, Calipari doesn’t expect him to reprise his sixth-man role anytime soon.
“I would say, looking at today, he’s a starter because you have to have him start the game,” Calipari said. “(We) can’t start the game like we did today. I’ll watch the tape and watch the game, but I think he solidified one spot with great intensity and fire, which is what we were looking for.”
Kidd-Gilchrist’s response to learning of his new starter role was about what you would expect from a player with his selfless reputation.
“It’s great to know, but it doesn’t mean anything,” Kidd-Gilchrist said. “I just want to win to tell you the truth, so it doesn’t matter who starts.”
UK showed against Transylvania they certainly are capable of satisfying Kidd-Gilchrist with a lot of wins and even Calipari may have been taken in by the hype surrounding the Wildcats. Maybe there was a thought in the back of his mind that this could be the team he could finally sit back and watch dominate based on talent alone. Well, any hint of that is gone, replaced with the realization of what’s ahead.
“(I) still like my team,” Calipari said. “But I got a lot of work to do. I thought it was going to be easy. It’s not going to be easy. It’s going to be hard.”
The work may be hard and the trip may be long, but if the last two seasons are any indication, it will be worth it in the end.
