Kentucky Wildcats Basketball: To Platoon or not to Platoon
By Paul Jordan
What is a Kentucky Wildcats Basketball season without a little drama and social media bashing of John Calipari? Despite the 2-0 record to start the season, John Calipari’s Kentucky Wildcats basketball team only won by 19 points on Sunday, prompting an onslaught of “the sky is falling” tweets and general malaise among a small portion of the Big Blue Nation. The general bone of contention was Calipari’s handling of his bench. After all, that platoon system that fans were so hyped about should be able to do more than be down by 5 at the half to Buffalo, right?
You can look at it a few ways. Either the platoon system is falling apart, or the nation was seeing an effort never before seen before by this gutsy Buffalo team. Apparently, Buffalo beating Kentucky by 5 points at halftime had even experienced scribes giddy and feeling they were watching a bit of history. Such a performance by Buffalo was going to be career altering by all involved.
No matter what happens the rest of today, some athletic directors are moving Bobby Hurley up the wish list, I’m guessing.
— Brett Dawson (@BDawsonWrites) November 16, 2014
As we all know, basketball is a game of two halves and order was restored to college basketball as the Kentucky Wildcats quickly took control of the game in the second half. Proving perhaps that John Calipari knows a bit about halftime adjustments and how to coach a college basketball team.
Kentucky 71, Buffalo 52 F | Cats outscore Bulls 38-14 in second half. Tyler Ulis, Trey Lyles with 12 points each. Up next: Kansas.
— Brett Dawson (@BDawsonWrites) November 16, 2014
Crisis averted, John Calipari would be able to prepare for the Kansas Jayhawks and Bobby Hurley would be free to coach his Buffalo team without those pesky ADs trying to steal him away mid-game.
All joking aside, this should have been the game story. There are a number of reasons for the slow play in the first half, but probably first and foremost, Kentucky was sluggish because they were coming off a Friday night game that ended around 10:00 PM and this was a Sunday game at noon. You don’t even get that kind of turnaround in the NCAA tournament and it is asking a bit much for any team to play to their top potential the first two games of the season.
Even John Calipari admitted after the game his team had no energy and forewarned once again that there would be losses this year. And with the losses will inevitably come a Big Blue freak out by a portion of the fan base.