LOUISVILLE, Ky. (WDRB) -- After sending freshman Cam’Ron Fletcher home to St. Louis on Sunday, John Calipari made more moves to shake his Kentucky basketball team out of its five-game malaise.
A sports psychologist was recruited to talk to the players, a move I suspect that departed assistant head coach Kenny Payne could have handled before he left for the Knicks.
A three-player leadership team of upperclassmen, that features Davion Mintz and two unnamed players, was assigned the task of teaching the freshmen that pouting, talking back and other signs of acting as if you’re 13 years old will not be tolerated. It could get you sent home. Ask Fletcher, a player that Calipari said would like to return.
Calipari and his wife, Ellen, will host players whose families will not be in Lexington at their home overnight for Christmas.
Anything else?
Playing Louisville.
That's what has regularly made Calipari’s team better. It’s been the Cards, not the Wildcats, who needed a sports psychologist in this series.
Louisville has been Kentucky's chicken noodle soup. On Saturday at 1 p.m., in a sparsely full KFC Yum! Center, Calipari's team will try to get well against Louisville again.
Everybody is picking the Cards. They're likely to be favored by about four points.
You know the numbers: Since arriving at UK for the 2009-10 season, Calipari has celebrated 11 wins in 13 games against the Cardinals.
He’s nine of 11 in regular-season games and 2-0 in the NCAA Tournament. He is 2-0 against Chris Mack, 1-0 against David Padgett and 8-2 against Rick Pitino.
Even when Calipari has lost, he’s nearly won. Both defeats were one-possession games the Cardinals survived by three.
This game is different. Kentucky has lost five straight, a stretch that includes stumbles against Georgia Tech and Notre Dame, teams that do not figure to make the NCAA Tournament.
Three times, Calipari has played the Cardinals with the Wildcats coming off a defeat. Three times, Kentucky has delivered a victory, including last season, when the Wildcats ended a two-game losing streak by defeating a Louisville team ranked No. 3, 78-70, in overtime.
Like I said, the Cardinals have more mental hurdles in this game than the Wildcats. Calipari knows that.
“By the way, I offered to postpone the game if they wanted to,” Calipari said Thursday morning.
“For some reason, they told me no, they’re good, they’ll go.
“I said, ‘But, you’re not going to have fans. Do you still really want to play this?’
“And they said, ‘Oh, yeah, we want to go.’ So I guess they’re OK now.”
After the last three weeks he has endured, Calipari needs a chance to wisecrack. So he re-ignited his back-and-forth with Mack about the scheduling of this game, a welcome relief from talking about how poorly his 1-5 team has played.
Let the record show that after ending a two-game losing streak by beating the Cardinals last season, good things happened for Kentucky. The Wildcats won eight of nine and 16 of 18.
“I’m not looking it at it like, ‘Oh, this is the game we have to win,'" Calipari said. “I don’t coach any game that way.
“This is the game we’ve got to start playing better. This is a game we’ve got to finish the last four minutes like we’ve been coached.”
For Calipari, that was a transition into his reminder that it was time for players to coach themselves on effort, attitude and teamwork. His job was to focus on how to handle Louisville’s pack-line defense, how to defend U of L guard Carlik Jones in the screen-and-roll and keeping David Johnson from getting to the rim.
“This is unrelenting, because the competition hasn’t given us a chance to just play OK and win a game and start believing,” Calipari said.
“So now, we’ve got to go. One of the things I’m doing is, I just told them, ‘I’m going to have fun with this. I’m going to enjoy myself.’
“We named three guys to be leaders, to deal with all the non-negotiables, attitudes, how you accept coaching. I’m not dealing with any of that now.
“The players are going to deal with that. So that’s off my plate.
“But I said it, I haven’t lost any faith in this team. I’m not — I don’t listen or read anything you guys or anybody else is saying. It doesn’t help.
“Whether you tell me I’m the greatest or now I’m the worst, that doesn’t have any effect on me other than how do I do this to make sure these kids understand, ‘I’m with you.' This isn’t easy. People are seeing blood in the water and you’re at Kentucky. This is their chance.
“And I’m not talking specifically about Louisville. I’m talking about every team in our league. ‘This is our chance to smash these dudes.’
“And so, they’ve got to understand these teams are coming. We’re not going to face a team that doesn’t play hard or plays poorly. They’re not going to. I don’t expect that Saturday. I expect Louisville to play well. I expect it.
“What I’m hoping is we play better. And if we’re playing better and we see it and we compete, we’ll live with the results.”
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