Penny signs a five year extension then promptly loses a home game to Tulsa lol.
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I really can’t say whether or not the extension was a bad move or not. Memphis is such a bizarre program and I’m not really sure what the floor or ceiling of it is. He’s been consistently mediocre (56, 59, 61 on Kenpom), but maybe the thought is that he can recruit well enough to eventually be able to just out-talent the American conference? Their only recent big picture success was from the Calapari blatantly cheating years. They never made it to the second weekend of the tourney under Pastner and were flat out bad under Tubby. If Penny gets some good advice he’ll hire an offensive minded assistant and hand over that side of the ball entirely to him.
If someone hands over the offense to an assistant they basically cease to be the head coach at that point haha. I’ve never heard of that happening before.
Pretty sure Jim Ferry was actually Pat Chambers’ “offensive coordinator”
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The thing about Kentucky’s recruiting practices is that if they suck this year, it really has no bearing on how good they’ll be next year. Generally, they have a few 2nd and 3rd year players sprinkled in to keep things steady - this year those are pretty wildly mediocre transfers. Last year’s team was relatively “experienced” for them - Tyrese Maxey and Keion Brooks were the only Freshmen in the rotation (and they’re really missing Brooks I think now). What really hurt was that they lost all their freshmen, at this point - Maxey was a lottery pick, Whitney is…god knows where?, Juzang went to UCLA, and Keion Brooks is hurt. Recruiting top 20 players and having them at the tail end of the rotations probably isn’t feasible going forward.
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Travis Steele was Chris Mack’s “offensive coordinator” at Xavier supposedly
I think to some extent you’re correct. I also think that when your roster is incredibly young you’re going to see more early-season issues due to the lack of practice and buy games this year. They should get better as the season goes on if this relationship doesn’t blow up.
I think the bigger challenges for UK would be if the combination of overall HS talent level coming down a bit combined with the G-League and other programs starting to go after the top guys forces Cal to adapt. The other potential risk, which we’re seeing happening with Tennessee football, is that one of these guys ignites a flamethrower on his way out of the program and gets the NCAA to look at them sideways.
If he keeps enough local talent it might be worth it. Hiring a program legend often puts the program in an extremely awkward spot.
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Thinking about their E8 win over us, IIRC it was Dakari Johnson that was their third-string center that came in and dominated the offensive glass. Third-string and also McDonalds AA. Maybe the overall culture has changed to the point where Cal can no longer stockpile these guys and get them to buy in to the team concept he sells them? Dunno.
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Yeah, the elimination of 1 and done would hurt them a bit, obviously. I wonder if they’d still dominate recruiting, just for that “next tier” of player, with everything bumping down like 10-15 spots.
For things under their control, the fact that they’ve lost at least 5-6 players in the last 2 years after their freshman years who aren’t going to the NBA is a problem (Juzang, Whitney, Hagans, looks like more coming this year). The Hagans’, Quickleys, Washingtons, Richards’ etc have been pretty important to them as sophomores/juniors.
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The year they beat us they had the Harrison twins as older players too. It almost feels like their system has become too extreme with no upper classmen program-guys to hold things together. I have always been leery of a 5-star program philosophy like the 1990s at Michigan (since that’s when I was in school).
What makes me excited about Juwan is the OTHER guys he’s getting that will sustain the program while we get 1-2 top guys coming for short periods of time. Williams, Jackson, Collins, Tschetter, etc.
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Cal has had mostly all freshman teams work, and he’s had teams work with a couple upperclassman. This year’s team was just a disaster though, seems like they just don’t gel at all. I’m not going to say Cal’s method just doesn’t work because of this year though.
The guy that just stepped away from their team would be a guy that should stay 2-3 years. So it’s not like he’s ignoring that level of player.
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He’s often had at least a few holdovers from the prior year - even the Anthony Davis/MKG team had Doron Lamb, Darius Miller, and Terrence Jones playing large roles.
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Yeah this year their upperclassmen are both transfers so there’s literally no continuity in a weird year where continuity is likely very beneficial.
Clark and Boston are the lottery level talents on their team, and they need those to produce. Which they aren’t right now and might be hindered by the roster construction
Definitely agree that there’s always an upperclassman or two playing big roles on a UK or Duke OAD-based team. Quinn Cook immediately comes to mind at Duke as a senior who started and was relied on there.
But that’s always been a part of the mix for those programs. What’s potentially changing is the ability to hang on to five-stars beyond a year. Maybe if today’s world applied to 13/14 Cal doesn’t have one or both of the Harrison twins available, for example (cringe at the memory of that 3).
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Maybe you’re right - maybe the new era with high mobility is what will make the 1-and-done factories difficult to sustain. None of the guys who would be “role players” or “program guys” want to stick around and sit behind wave after wave of top-50 guys. I think the difference is that their WORST recruits still think they should be starters and NBA early entries. There are no guys ranked 75-150 for the most part.
I’m sure guys like Terrence Williams and Zeb Jackson HOPE they are future early entries, but the reality is that they know that’s a longer shot and they may end up playing 3-4 years.
Kentucky Teams (Returnees are people who were on the team the previous year and are not listed as a “benchwarmer” on KenPom)
| Year | KenPom | Returnees |
|---|---|---|
| 2021 | 50 | 1 (injured) |
| 2020 | 29 | 4 |
| 2019 | 8 | 3 |
| 2018 | 17 | 2 |
| 2017 | 4 | 5 |
| 2016 | 6 | 5 |
| 2015 | 1 | 8 |
| 2014 | 13 | 3 |
| 2013 | 55 | 3 |
| 2012 | 1 | 4 |
| 2011 | 7 | 5 |
| 2010 | 4 | 5 |
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I’m not sure what to do with that chart but it is very interesting. Probably missing enough data to draw conclusions. But if we want to make wild conclusions from limited data…they finished top-7 in KP every time they had five returning players. The 2019 year with 3 and #8 breaks any true trends though.
How much senior leadership you have, whether you have a seasoned point guard–two of the bigger success variables, I think. We’re constantly saying this or that player is no good, limited, etc., watching them boom out a year or two later. And then. . . some promising players never do.
Marcus Lee is the one you are thinking about. McD’s AA and had 7 offensive rebounds in 15 minutes of game time. He had only played about 30 minutes in the previous 2+ months of games combined but got pressed into action after Willie Cauley-Stein got injured in the previous game.
And I am still amazed that Kentucky had 17 offensive rebounds in that game compared to our 10 defensive rebounds. They literally snagged 63% of their own missed shots (while shooting 51% on 2s, 64% on 3s) and we somehow were still in the game (rebounding 43% of our own missed shots helped).
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