Here’s how John Calipari pictures it.
You watch his No. 1-ranked Kentucky basketball team on Tuesday and you see a pack of Wildcats clawing. They play hard. They play together. They have, in Calipari’s words, “a great presence, a great spirit about them.”
And, by the by, they beat No. 2 Michigan State in the Champions Classic at Chicago’s United Center.
That last part is optional.
“If that’s a loss — I’d like it to be a win — but if it’s a loss and I get that from this team, it’s the building point that we go from,” Calipari said Monday.
The scrapping and the fighting and the winning are how Calipari dreams it goes down Tuesday night on ESPN. He’s not sure how close that vision is to reality.