Cal's Cats playing for top spot with '2-game losing streak' mind set

Cal's Cats playing for top spot with '2-game losing streak' mind set
http://www.ukathletics.com/blog/index.html
By Eric Lindsey on January 22, 2010 5:07 PM

With a proverbial target on their backs, the Kentucky Wildcats have chosen to take the arrows out of their backs and aim the bow at the rest of the nation.

Although UK is the hands-on favorite to be the No. 1 team in the nation if it beats Arkansas on Saturday, head coach John Calipari has decided to motivate his team with an interesting concept: a two-game losing streak.

Apparently, as Calipari has told reporters and instructed his players to practice like, they're beaten, bruised and hungry. No. 1 team in the nation? One would hardly know it by the change in practice leading up to Saturday's 4 p.m. game vs. Arkansas at Rupp Arena.

Caliarpi said he has become more aggressive with the players in practice and has extended the sessions about 15 minutes longer than he usually does around this time of the year. Unexpected of an undefeated team to say the very least.

"There' s no joking around (in practice)," senior guard/forward Ramon Harris said. "Guys are drill to drill, guys are hustling, guys are running hard. I'm not saying we weren't doing that before, but when you lose two games, you focus a little more and that what guys are trying to do."




Freshman guard John Wall, who has yet to experience a loss of any kind on the collegiate level, is fine with reversing to an underdog's mentality.

"I think that is the best thing that coach Cal has done with us except for Camp Cal when we were off for break and we had those three days of practice," Wall said. "I think that is the best thing he did because everybody is playing different and harder than we did before. When you think about it, when you lose two games you are going to be upset. He said he hasn't lost two games in a row in a long time, so he got our mind set to practice that way."

Only the Cats haven't lost two games. They haven't even lost one. They're really a win away from snatching the No. 1 ranking for the first time since March 2003.

The players said before Friday's practice that a No. 1 ranking would mean a lot to them because, as Wall said so accurately, "Everybody plays the game to be No. 1 in college basketball."

However, it's crystal clear that the top of the polls is just a small goal in a much more elaborate plan.

"We are playing for a No. 1 seed," Calipari said. "If this game Saturday helps us get a No. 1 seed, that's all fine. But, you don't know. It's not life or death. Our thing is let's go out and let's see if we are playing the way we need to play."

That's the main motivation behind Calipari's more aggressive practices of late. While the rest of the nation is talking in one ear about how good they are, in the other ear Calipari is telling them to stay humble and hungry.

Otherwise, Kentucky will endure the same fates that previous No. 1 Kansas and soon-to-fall No. 1 Texas have endured in the last few weeks. Or, take for instance the suddenly downtrodden Boilermakers of Purdue, who lost three straight after starting the season 13-0.

"What coach is trying to tell us is there are certain things that separate different teams," Harris said. "We're not the only good team in this country right now. There are other teams that can beat us and can play as good as us. What he's trying to say is those little things separate the good from the great teams."

Calipari has continued to emphasize that Kentucky is one off-night or one hot shooting night from an opposing player away from dropping its first game.

And his words might prove to be prophetic if Arkansas sophomore guard Rotnei Clarke (18.3 points per game) repeats some of his previous performances from this season.

"I recruited him really hard and I loved him as a high school player," Calipari said. "I've watched four or five tapes and he doesn't need a whole lot of time to get it off. He works real hard to get shots off, and if he takes 15 3s and hits 11, it's been one heck of a start to our season. We aren't going to stop him from shooting them."

Clarke is filling it up with the best of the nation this year. In a season eerily familiar to the one Jodie Meeks put together in 2008-09, Clarke has drilled 66 3-pointers on the year at a sweltering 49.3-percent rate.

What makes Clarke nearly un-guardable is that he has quite arguably the quickest release in the Southeastern Conference and has the freedom from Arkansas head coach and former Kentucky great John Pelphrey to shoot from just about anywhere on the floor.

"If you're not ready for that then you might get beat by 40 because if he gets going it is going to be tough to stop him," Wall said. "Our main thing this week in practice has been fighting through the screens because if he gets hot teams are in trouble. He's the type of person you don't want to get hot because he can change the game for them like Corey Allmond did in the Sam Houston State game."

Clarke nearly topped Meeks' record-setting performance early in the season with a 51-point explosion vs. Alcorn State. A few games later, he dropped 10 treys on East Tennessee State.

Even more troubling is that point guard Courtney Fortson, the primary playmaker in the Arkansas offense, has returned from a 14-game suspension and has added an instant boost to a team that was in shambles at the beginning of the year.

Clearly, with a potential No. 1 ranking on the horizon, a target will be on the backs of the Wildcats when they host Arkansas on Saturday.

"Now, how are we going to practice?" Calipari said. "What are we going to go to get ourselves ready? What's your mentality? What's your focus like if we just lost two? Because if we don't start stepping up and practicing that way, we are going to lose two in a row."