Kentucky’s first offseason additions are finally imminent — with a snag, of course, as former Ole Miss commit and Overtime Elite leading scorer Jordan Burks pushed back his announcement from Wednesday to Monday — even if they do nothing to solve the experience problem in Lexington. Burks, who is still expected to pick the Wildcats despite the delay, would be the sixth (and counting) freshman on the 2023-24 roster. Two more high school recruits are visiting Thursday and might just move directly into the dorms by the weekend. So while Burks’ former coach is effusive in praising the 6-foot-9 wing, believes he has NBA potential and can make UK immediately better, he’s also wondering what a lot of other folks are right now: Doesn’t John Calipari need some older guys too?
“It’s going to be so interesting to watch Kentucky with all this talent but so much youth and not a lot of depth,” Hillcrest Prep coach Nick Weaver says. “It’s going to be fascinating to see it play out. You know what everybody says now: get old. But Cal is going completely the other way. So if he wins big with this group, it could be one of the best coaching jobs ever, because it’s just really hard to win with young kids, now more than ever.”
As Weaver points out, conventional wisdom suggests Calipari’s approach to building his roster is not very wise. Three consecutive subpar seasons have also eliminated so much benefit of the doubt the 64-year-old Hall of Famer once enjoyed. “Cal will figure this out” is no longer universally assumed. But a devil’s advocate might make this argument: Calipari has always zigged when others zagged, which vaulted him to the very top of the sport for a long time, and after trying (and failing) with more traditional, older rosters the last two years, maybe it makes some sense to return to his roots and lean all the way back into a youth movement.
Calipari has long believed that talent and upside are preferable to slow-cooked, lower-ceiling vets. And to be fair, he did at least try to hop aboard the “get old” train. Five of his team’s top seven players last season were senior transfers. Six of his top seven the previous season were juniors or seniors, five of them transfers. But those two teams won a total of two postseason games, one apiece in the SEC and NCAA tournaments, and it would appear now that Calipari is done with the experience-matters experiment. The king of one-and-done is on the verge of extending double middle fingers to conventional wisdom and rolling out a roster with as many as eight freshmen, two sophomores and … perhaps zero juniors or seniors next season.
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“It’s going to be so interesting to watch Kentucky with all this talent but so much youth and not a lot of depth,” Hillcrest Prep coach Nick Weaver says. “It’s going to be fascinating to see it play out. You know what everybody says now: get old. But Cal is going completely the other way. So if he wins big with this group, it could be one of the best coaching jobs ever, because it’s just really hard to win with young kids, now more than ever.”
As Weaver points out, conventional wisdom suggests Calipari’s approach to building his roster is not very wise. Three consecutive subpar seasons have also eliminated so much benefit of the doubt the 64-year-old Hall of Famer once enjoyed. “Cal will figure this out” is no longer universally assumed. But a devil’s advocate might make this argument: Calipari has always zigged when others zagged, which vaulted him to the very top of the sport for a long time, and after trying (and failing) with more traditional, older rosters the last two years, maybe it makes some sense to return to his roots and lean all the way back into a youth movement.
Calipari has long believed that talent and upside are preferable to slow-cooked, lower-ceiling vets. And to be fair, he did at least try to hop aboard the “get old” train. Five of his team’s top seven players last season were senior transfers. Six of his top seven the previous season were juniors or seniors, five of them transfers. But those two teams won a total of two postseason games, one apiece in the SEC and NCAA tournaments, and it would appear now that Calipari is done with the experience-matters experiment. The king of one-and-done is on the verge of extending double middle fingers to conventional wisdom and rolling out a roster with as many as eight freshmen, two sophomores and … perhaps zero juniors or seniors next season.
Get young, stay young? Kentucky could add 3 more freshmen to its mountain of youth
The Wildcats don't have a single junior or senior on the roster. John Calipari is pursuing more freshmen, plunging ahead on youth movement.
theathletic.com
