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Coaches Rick Barnes of Tennessee and John Calipari of Kentucky have been friends for years and their rivalry in SEC play has not changed that. This year Tennessee has been picked as the league favorite while Calipari’s team was not ranked in the top 10 of the Associated Press preseason poll for only the second time in his tenure at UK.
While Barnes has a veteran team, Calipari’s team has eight freshmen and two sophomores on the roster.
“It’s tough when you’re there,” Barnes said about Calipari’s young team. “I’ve got a great coaching staff, but I’ve got five guys (on the team) that know what we’re trying to get done out there that can help do it. If you don’t have that, it does make it more difficult.”
Barnes had some advice he knew Calipari probably wouldn’t like.
“The word that John probably doesn’t like, like any other coach, is ‘patience.’ You have to be really patient when you have that many young guys because you want to see ’em get better every day,” Barnes said. “Most young guys will have a good day, maybe next day not so much. If you tell them they’ve had a good day, you can almost bet it’s not going to be as good the next day.
“He has to balance a lot of different things. Anytime you’re coaching young guys, but knowing you have to get them to do a couple things well early, whereas with an older group, you can get a lot more done early in the year compared to the younger guys.”
However, Barnes does know Calipari well enough to expect one thing from the Wildcats this year.
“We would all tell you talent is a good thing to have. He certainly has that. But he’s a terrific coach. Our league’s got terrific coaches,” Barnes said. “In this league, every team where we start, where they start, will be better at the end of the year because of the level of coaching in this league.”
2 Responses
Everybody else in the league gets better by season’s end. We seem to implode and with it happening to the extent that it has in the last 5 years, you would think that a "good" coach would figure a way to change that. Calipari does the same thing year after year and can’t figure out why it doesn’t work anymore. The other coaches made adjustments, but not Calipari. Either he is too arrogant or just doesn’t know how.
He’s definitely NOT a good coach.