The latest weapon being brought to bear for the struggling University of Kentucky men's basketball program is the power of the mind.
Assistant coach Joel Justus, sitting in for head coach John Calipari in advance of Saturday's 6:30 p.m. game at Mississippi State, used the phrase “mental picture,” or some variant of it, at least a dozen times in a 15-minute or so Q&A with reporters.
Calipari regularly uses a sports psychologist with his players, and positive visualization is a part of that. But when your team is off to a 1-6 start, the fan base is boiling on social media and elsewhere, and many of your highly touted young players have never experienced anything like this — or at this level — before, hanging on to that positive outlook and self-image can be difficult.
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.