Vicky Graff Photo
If you have listened to Kentucky coach John Calipari any in the last month you have heard him use the term “random basketball” regularly. It’s his new philosophy/terminology for this year’s team.
So what exactly is random basketball?
“You have got to have five. It is kind of like you have five 3-point shooters. Do you know what you would do? Shoot lots of 3’s. I even said it after the game, you know, we played random the whole second half, ran two or three things, everything else was random,” Calipari said after Monday’s 40-point win over New Mexico State.
“And random is we are spacing the court and we are playing off of one another. That’s random basketball. So spacing, wide, there’s actions that will happen, three guys together, two guys together.”
Calipari seems to have decided less is better when it comes to what he asks players on this year’s team to do.
“The more that you put on their plate, the less they can, one, play random. Because random means you have got to be really unselfish. You can’t have one guy try to dribble it 12 times,” Calipari said.
To play random, though, Kentucky also has to rebound. It has three 7-footers on the roster but none are able to play for various reasons.
“We rebounded today because the guards rebounded,” Calipari said Monday. “Robert (Dillingham) got five. Reed (Sheppard) had five. Antonio (Reeves) stuck his nose in there a few times. And it’s going to be who we are going to have to be.
“Last year we had one of the best rebounders (Oscar Tshiebwe) in a generation. Like we may never see that in our lifetime again, what we saw for the two years that Oscar was here. Now we have got to do it a little different.
“One, we have got to block out. And that means everybody. And that means we have got to gain rebounds, stuff like that.”
One Response
Rebounding is a discipline. You have to block out your man and hit the boards. Get the rebound to stop the opponent’s offense, then run out and put pressure on their defense to guard. Offensively, you take advantage of the mismatches and those will be different throughout the game. You attack and if you beat your man, you take the shot. If another guy picks you up, you go to the guy he was guarding. Everyone on this team can shoot and score, but not if they force shots. Take the first good shot that comes available, hit the boards if it misses, and get back on defense when the possession changes. There is nothing random about it…you always attack the weakest defender.