Young Kentucky Needs to Grow Up, Toughen Up

Filed under: Kentucky

An understatement as preface: It's extremely difficult to win the first 19 games of a college basketball season. Furthermore, it's exceedingly difficult to do what John Calipari and the Kentucky Wildcats did a year ago, which was win their first 19 games while starting three freshmen. So, with John Wall, Eric Bledsoe, and DeMarcus Cousins gone, this year's batch of young Wildcats have not experienced similar success.

Sure they won a hotly contested battle over a ranked and experienced Washington team in Maui, and certainly they played North Carolina down to the wire in Chapel Hill. But given last year's success, the early season struggles are either proof that last year was an aberration or a sign that Kentucky may have some issues this season.

Or, more likely, both.

Calipari, for his part, attributes much of the early bumps to mistrust between players.

"We were passive [against] North Carolina," Calipari told the Associated Press. "They were the aggressor, we were passive. Why? Because we had a couple of guys on the floor you could not trust. Then everybody pulls back, no one helps, no one makes a rotation, no one wants to leave their own man because they don't have any trust."

 

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