Could another Breakfast Club lead to another national title?

Chin Coleman likes the competitive nature of this year's team. (Vicky Graff Photo)

There is already one similarity between John Calipari’s current Kentucky team and his 2012 national championship team.

You might remember the national title team got national attention for its “Breakfast Club” started by Michael Kidd-Gilchrist. Calipari talked often about the players’ willingness to work out that early on their own and he credited that as a big reason for the team’s success.

On Thursday assistant coach Chin Coleman revealed that this team had its own version of the Breakfast Club.

“There’s a group that goes at 7 a.m. in the morning. We call them the Breakfast Club. We have about four or five that have been in that group,” Coleman, who was not on Calipari’s staff 10 years ago for the original Breakfast Club, said.

“Our guys are taking advantage of the culture and working extremely hard to the point where some guys have to dial back a little bit because some guys are working out three times a day, four times a day.”

That sounds like the work ethic Kidd-Gilchrist had and brought other players along with him.

Coleman believes the players having chances this summer to attend satellite camps helped rejuvenate some of them.

“They kind of brought back that hustle to our spring training, our summer training, so it’s been great. It’s been great to see guys compete, who’s the first in the gym, who’s the last out of the gym. There’s an inner locker room competition,” Coleman said.

The upcoming four-game exhibition trip to the Bahamas will give the players a chance to expand that competition and also let the coaches tinker with different lineups/ideas.

“This trip is huge for the chemistry building, team bonding, and to allow us as a staff to try some things that we want to try to tweak when we get back in the fall,” Kentucky assistant coach Orlando Antigua said.

“Cal is a master at understanding and getting a feel for his teams in terms of when we need to push or we need to back off to bring them along. We’ll obviously make some adjustments in the fall and not start off as early as we normally would in a year we’re not traveling.”