Kentucky Basketball: Who Should Be the Wildcats' Starting 5?
Kentucky head coach John Calipari is like a scientist—the regular season is his laboratory, and the changes to his lineup rotations are the variables in his experiment. The scary thing for the rest of the college basketball world is the possibility that he reaches his desired conclusion by March using this scientific method.
Calipari threw Wildcats fans another curveball in Tuesday's dominating 86-37 win over Missouri when he started little-used sophomore Dominique Hawkins.
Whether it is a long-term move in an effort to get back to the full five-man platoons or just a lineup change to reward a hard-working player against an overmatched opponent remains to be seen, but Hawkins was certainly thrilled, via Tim Sullivan of The Courier-Journal:
"My jaw dropped. It was like, 'Is it happening again?' because I have started before, and then the next day it actually hit me that I was starting and I needed to prepare for it. . .
I was really excited about it, but I was kind of nervous 'cause I felt if I start off bad, I'm never going to get the opportunity again. Luckily, I started off really good and coach liked what I did today.
"
So what will Kentucky's starting lineup look like for the rest of the year? Or perhaps more importantly, what should it look like?
It is a question that is much more difficult to answer with the Wildcats than any other team because of the five-man rotation switches that Calipari uses. He cannot simply put his best five guys in the starting lineup because that would significantly weaken the bench that plays just as many minutes in the theoretical platoon system.
However, it wouldn't be a worthwhile science experiment if it was easy. Here is my best shot at it:
Point Guard: Andrew Harrison
Shooting Guard: Aaron Harrison
Forward: Trey Lyles
Forward: Karl-Anthony Towns
Forward: Willie Cauley-Stein
Experience is often overrated when it comes to Kentucky basketball because so many people fret over whether it can possibly replace all the departed NBA talent, and it almost always does. However, there is something to be said for keeping Andrew Harrison, Aaron Harrison and Willie Cauley-Stein together in the starting lineup because they are accustomed to playing with each other.
Rarely does Calipari get the benefit of experience in his roster, and he can keep that experience together to start (and possibly finish) off games with this lineup.
Elsewhere, Trey Lyles is athletic enough to run the floor and act like a small forward if needed, but he can also physically dominate the opposing small forward down low if called upon. Those types of physical advantages are what helped Kentucky handle the likes of North Carolina, Kansas, UCLA, Texas and Louisville in the nonconference season.
Cauley-Stein and Karl-Anthony Towns are arguably Kentucky's two best players, at least if you go by the latest mock draft from DraftExpress that has Towns going No. 3 and Cauley-Stein going No. 5. Starting them together helps each get into the rhythm of the game from the opening tip and establish a sense of how the other plays in the post.
This is important because they will theoretically be the two bigs on the blocks in crunch time of tournament games.
Overall, this starting group has a little bit of everything, from Aaron Harrison's shooting to Andrew Harrison's ability to break down the defense and set up his teammates to the potentially dominant rebounding trio of Towns, Cauley-Stein and Lyles.
What's more, this also helps Calipari with his bench situation.
If he does choose to continue with the platoon system and include Hawkins as part of the regular rotation, the second platoon will be quicker and smaller than the first. Yes, Marcus Lee and Dakari Johnson are still there to control the boards, but the second unit would have three guards in Hawkins, Tyler Ulis and Devin Booker.
The ability to change styles from a big man-oriented first group to a quicker lineup with the second one could present problems for the opposition and ultimately give other coaches too much to prepare for on the eve of a game.
There is also a little bit of everything with the bench because Ulis is explosive enough to blow by defenders, Booker is Kentucky's best three-point shooter (50.8 percent), and Lee and Johnson are more than capable of outrebounding the opposition.
Another aspect of this group off the bench is that it gives Calipari some substitution options if he doesn't choose to use the platoon system. If he needs more shooting, he can insert Booker alongside the Harrisons, or if his team just needs a spark of energy with a full-court press or attacking style, he can use Ulis.
It also gives Calipari the option to use Ulis off the bench in some of the most critical moments of the game, which would likely please Seth Davis of Sports Illustrated and SI College Hoops given these tweets:
While Calipari can certainly do that if Ulis starts, his energy off the bench can be jarring for an opposing team that is just settling into the flow of the game.
It may seem strange talking about Kentucky's bench so much in a piece centered on what the starting lineup should look like, but it is all connected for the Wildcats. The starters will play, and the bench will play regardless of who hears their name called before tipoff.
There really is no one lineup that Calipari has settled on yet, but the one that he uses in the final four minutes of tightly contested postseason games is the one that will ultimately matter.
How the variables play over the course of the next two months will determine what that formula looks like in March.
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