John Calipari has spent much of his fourth season at Kentucky trying to reach his players, not unlike his first three campaigns in Lexington. But the message hasn't seemed to nest in the recesses of the players' minds, an issue that has left the Cats struggling to find any consistency.
The latest example came at Alabama where the young Cats went away from everything that worked while building a nine-point halftime advantage on the road and ultimately dropped their sixth game of the season. The barrage of wild drives by Archie Goodwin and Ryan Harrow, ill-advised fouls from Alex Poythress and errors in discipline and judgement from everyone in blue was in stark contrast to what Calipari began to see in a win over Auburn just days before.
“Look, we still haven't totally bought in,” Calipari said after the loss in Tuscaloosa. “Individual players haven't. But they just haven't bought in, so we're still doing it. But this is a team that's growing and getting better. We showed signs and now we took a step back.”
Walter Cornett, of Glendale, Kentucky, is the owner and operator of Walter's Wildcat World. He founded WildcatWorld.com in 1998 making it one of the oldest Kentucky basketball fan sites in operation today.