Kentucky has “physical players who are men” this season

John Calipari believes the SEC could be the best basketball conference in the country this year. (Jeff Houchin Photo)

After his team won only nine games last season, no way is Kentucky coach John Calipari going to complain about his team being ranked “only” 10th in the preseason Associated Press poll.

“That’s all good. We’ve got to play the games and see what happens. It’s a long season, and let’s just hope we’re one of the last teams standing at the end,” Calipari said at Media Day. “We may struggle early like we always do.

“We struggle early, too bad, let’s go, we’re going to get better. We’ve got good players, we’ve got good guards, we’ve got some physical players who are men. There’s not a whole lot of, I got fouled, and no one is saying that. You’re trying to survive.”

More physical play would help the Cats who have not been an overly physical team the past few years and that has hurt in SEC play where UK is picked again to win the league title.

“Let me say this about our league. Our league is probably the best it’s ever been, and our league may be the best league in the country. Those games should be games where every fan is trying to get to, the league games because they’re going to be — and you know the league always gives us the hardest games,” Calipari said.

“If it’s only one game (against an SEC team), where are we playing them? We’re playing them on the road and there’s (ESPN) GameDay. It’s going to be a dogfight like it is every year, but the league has gotten better. The coaches by and large are recruiting and doing good stuff.”

Calipari preached for years that the league needed to improve and schools have made major investments in the basketball program. Calipari says Kentucky has to also invest in more than just basketball.

“Here, we have to reinvest. Now it’s our turn to go back and reinvest in all our stuff. We’ve got to be the gold standard. I want to have a campus that has everything on it, men and women, teams and sports science and housing and how they eat and dieticians and even classrooms where other students can be a part of it,”the UK coach said.

“My vision is always as it is, ridiculous, but the gold standard — men’s basketball at Kentucky. Men’s basketball here. All that’s been done over the years has been because administrations want to win championships — listen to me — in men’s basketball. Over the years, they always made that commitment, and we’re continuing that now.”