TORONTO– Kentucky coach John Calipari has used this week as a lesson in expectations for his talented young team.
The Cats won their third straight game in the Globl Jam here Saturday, racing to a 104-92 victory over an older, taller, more physical select team from Africa to move into the gold medal game of this four-team international tournament. Kentucky, which is representing the USA, will play host Canada, which defeated Germany, 84-8, in the championship game.
“We could have approached our game with Africa as just another game,’ he said. “They were 0-2. We were in the gold medal game, win or lose. But they came out and scrapped and fought. Why? Because it’s Kentucky. That’s what I told our guys afterwards. They’re going to get everybody’s best shot.”
Kentucky is playing such high level, entertaining basketball it hasn’t mattered.
The average age of this team is just 19 and the team’s oldest players are 22-year-old fifth year senior guard Antonio Reeves and wing Tre Mitchell.
Reeves has become the alpha scorer for this team, playing with the highest level of confidence. He went off for 27 points against Team Africa, making eight of 11 three-point shots.
Reeves left Kentucky last spring after one year with an uncertain future. He attended summer school at his initial school Illinois State in an attempt to finish up his degree work.
work and then possible enter the portal. But he wound up short on credits and returned to Lexington, giving Calipari the prolific wing scorer he needed.
Calipari repaid him by giving Reeves a green light all week.
“He trusted me, told me every time I was open to shoot the ball,” Reeves said.
Reeves looks he could be a major weapon as the Cats turn the page from the Oscar Tshiebwe era. The team is blessed with playmakers who make the extra pass and shooters. There are no less than five players– Reeves, Mitchell and three of the freshmen– DJ Wagner, Reed Sheppard and Justin Edwards– who have demonstrated they can make a meaningful shot in crunch time. Wagner played 32 minutes. Reeves played 30. Sheppard and Mitchell both played 28.
Wagner and Sheppard both finished with 18 points. Edwards had 16 while Mitchell added 12 and eight rebounds, including one stretch in the fourth quarter when he made back-to-back threes, another jumper, then had an assist on a three-point shot.
The Cats shot percent, made 14 threes and outrebounded a bigger African team that included 6-8 Nelly Joseph, who play for Iona last year before transferring to New Mexico, and 6-10 Emmanual Okorafor, a sophomore from Louisville, 46-44.
Calipari did not know how his team would react to physical competition after he took them to Drake’s mansion so they could use the pool.
But he had to be pleased with the effort.
“The thing we have. we have really good basketball players,” Calipari said. “They’re basketball players. and so you’ve got five guys at all times on the floor
that can pass and shoot and drive and make decisions.
“It’s my old way of playing. which is getting in space, space the court and you fly– which is probably most of my career, 90 percent of my coaching career that way but you got to have a bunch of guys who can play basketball ”.
The best may be yet to come once his two bigs 7-0 Aaron Bradshaw and 6-10 Ugonna Onyenso– two legit shot blockers– return from injuries. but their absence gave Calipari a chance to see how productive 6-8 Adou Thiero and Sheppard can be.
Sheppard has been a defensive highlight film blocking five threes. After watching him play, one NBA scout I spoke with was so impressed he started hinting that the kid might have a future at the next level.
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