Once we lost Poythress, we were like the avengers without the hulk. Still really really good. But not defending earth from aliens on hover boards good.
Calipari says he’s settled on his rotation
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Once we lost Poythress, we were like the avengers without the hulk. Still really really good. But not defending earth from aliens on hover boards good.
I'm looking forward to see how much they have improved and who gets more or less minutes after all the extra practice they have been getting, can't wait to watch the game tomorrow, at work sadly but watching all the same, GBB
Huh? I think you may have misunderstood the post. Hawkins is backing up Ulis and Murray at the 1/2 while Briscoe is the starter at the 3. Hawkins got minutes against UL because Briscoe was injured and he did great but I think as long as Briscoe is healthy he'll stay on the court.
You may be right...but my hunch is Cal wants more shooting on the floor and that means (to me) we'll see alot more run of Ullis, Murray and Hawkins on the perimeter and that will eat into Birscoe''s minutes. Ultimately, I think you'll see a ton less of Matthews as Briscoe gets the nod as best defender/rebounder from the wing spot. My guess is minutes will go like this...
Ullis - 35mpg
Murray - 32mpg
Hawkins - 25 mpg
Briscoe - 15 mpg
Matthews - 7 mpg
- Willis will not play at the 3 and exclusively at the 4 (I sort of hate to see that but I get his limiations) and Mulder's minutes are about to evaporate all together.
LOL!
Pretty funny analogy.
You are obviously a fan of the Avengers movie. Just FYI- in the comic books the Avengers existed without the Hulk in the lineup for 40+ years. He was a founding member, but quit after the first two issues of the comic. Sorry, I am kind of a comics geek.
Poythress has never been The Hulk and not having him only hurt us very little, but injuries are a part of sports. They happen to every team.
First of all the platoons weren't abandoned after Poythress went down. UK continued to use some form of modified platoons for about ten more games although as the year went on the usage of platoons did indeed drop, and Cal used them for less of the game.
As far as why he stopped using platoons, I think there's at least four reasons (although none of them good IMO).
1.) the theory that with Poy down that platoons could no longer be effective.
My response to this is that even with modified platoons UK was very effective. The more they went away from it, the less effective they became however.
If Cal didn't recognize it he should have after the Mississippi and Texas A& M games where he all but abandoned the platoons and UK promptly had their worst games of the season by far.
2.) Cal's coaching habits just weren't in line with platoons. Cal likes to pull some guys on a whim and the platoons handcuffed him to an extent, even though the results were clear that it was in his best interests to stick with units.
With Poy's injury and his change to modified platoons (where one guy would leak onto the other squad) it gave Cal a crack to substitute. Unfortunately it was like an itch that he kept wanting to scratch as this led Cal to substitute individually more and more to the point that he wasn't using it to its full potential and the advantages of using a platoon system were lost.
3.) Despite the early season rhetoric I don't think Cal (and a lot of UK fans including some on this board) truly understood or appreciated the power of the platoons.
To me the platoons was a tool to achieve levels that were not attainable using a more conventional substitution pattern. It truly was a way to get more out of a team than the summation of its parts.
That 2014-15 team was perfectly set up to run that way IMO, from many different perspectives. Even with Poythress going down, I thought UK had the depth in terms of Hawkins and Willis that the advantages of full platoons more than made up for any individual drawbacks.
Others disagreed but again I think part of that either fell to the fact that they were never really comfortable with or recognized the unique advantages that it provided.
4.) I think a major factor was pushback that Cal received on the recruiting trail. I think a lot of opposing coaches used the platoons against him and that set Cal back on his heels.
My response to this is that opposing coaches are going to use whatever they can to negatively recruit against UK regardless. If it's not platoons then it would be something else, so why let it affect what you do and what is in your team's best interests?
In the past Cal made a great effort to stress Team over individual and platoons meshes with that idea well. So going in the opposite direction to appease some recruits' concerns over playing time seemed to go against his long-term recruiting strategies.
As it turned out I think some of the guys who probably were the most problematic ended up not coming to UK anyway (I.e. Guys like Jaylen Brown and Malik Newman) even after Cal publicly distanced himself from playing platoons this season so it didn't help him anyway.
No doubt the platoon system was used against Cal/UK in recruiting, missing Newman was not such a bad thing considering Briscoe and Murray. Brown might have been a good fit. There is no such thing as a free lunch, whatever you do has a down side even Cal can't escape that reality.
How do you get that hunch from Cal saying Dom will replace Ulis and Murray, and Mathews will spell Briscoe?
I didnt forget, he was playing against the teams equal to a church league he played against last year. When the better teams showe
You can kiss my a$$, no ul fan here.
