Kentucky Wildcats Basketball: Jay Bilas and Seth Greenberg on Calipari’s Platoons

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ESPN college basketball analysts Jay Bilas and Seth Greenberg joined in on a conference call on Monday.

Here’s what they discussed about the the Kentucky Wildcats basketball platoon system.

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Jay Bilas: Well, if there were a platoon system I might have played more at Duke. Who knows? I don’t even know how many minutes I played. I think this is the best way — you know, Calipari is really smart, as you know. I think this is a wonderful way for him to do a number of different things. One, to have — they really do have 12 guys that can play. Not just 10. They’ve got 12. I think you could take Kentucky’s team and take the two six-man teams that they put into those platoons and you would have two teams that would be ranked in the top 25. That’s how highly I think of their talent level. What this does is it allows all their players to be able to play every day in practice, to keep competing. They don’t get stuck in roles kind of, and they can go out when they’re in the game without fear of getting tired because they’re know they’re going to go in a short four-minute burst, come out and be back in there in pretty short order. So, Cal is selling them not on their overall productivity, but their productivity per minute, which certainly the NBA looks at.

And the other part that it does — this is what I think the brilliant part of this is — you know how we act in the media — and I’m not saying it’s a negative, but it’s kind of the way it is. Kentucky’s going to win games no matter if they play a platoon system or not. As they go along, our narrative is going to change from how good they are to how do you beat them to what would you change and how could they get better and all that stuff. And we’re going to start talking about, Well, Tyler Ulis should be playing more than Andrew Harrison, or Trey Lyles should be playing more than Alex Poythress, all this stuff. I mean, I’m just making examples. I don’t even know if that would be the case. Just making those to throw out examples. So, instead of that being discussed — who should play and who should sit — the discussion right now is about the system and it’s about the team. Cal has done that beautifully, I think. And he’s sold the players on this idea.

What I saw in the Bahamas can work long term. Now, we’ll see as they get into games and he’s going to have to make decisions here and there, maybe on personnel as we go through the season. But I think it can be a great thing. We don’t see it very often. Not because players are too selfish, stuff like that, but I think we don’t see it that often because you don’t see this level of talent and this depth of talent on many teams. But I think it can work, and I think it’s going to be one of the really fun things to watch throughout the course of the season.

Seth Greenberg: I think it’s going to work. The one thing I would say — and they haven’t been put in this situation — when they get in the last four minutes of the game or eight minutes of the game or a team that’s extending their defense and maybe it’s turning them over because they’re not passing and catching, that 20 and 20 is going to end up 15 and 25. Then, not the players because I think Cal does a great job managing the players, it’s the static around the players that I would think would be his biggest concern.