Kansas vs. Kentucky Showcasing Two Coaching Legends Who Are Willing to Adapt
John Calipari posted a video back in April that showed him exercising while watching the 2012 national championship game between Kansas and Kentucky.
That night was the very best version of Calipari's approach, a collection of 5-star talents he had convinced to play with max effort, defend and execute in the half court. Bill Self's team, as it typically does, tried to pound the ball into the post using ball movement and angles. The Jayhawks had 14 possessions end in post-ups.
The two historic programs will battle it out Saturday, but the game Calipari watched during his workout hardly resembles the product both coaches will put on the floor in Lexington.
Calipari's Wildcats are something closer to Loyola Marymount's run-and-gun 1990 squad. They play fast and almost reckless, as if the points are worth more the faster they can score them. Calipari has long sold himself as an uptempo coach, but his teams at Kentucky have hardly played that way. In the 2012 title game, they did not score one bucket in transition in the second half.
Self has built his reputation on the backs of big men in his high-low offense. But this season he's embraced small ball, not all that unusual for the time period (thank you, Golden State Warriors) but out of character for the Kansas coach.
Great coaches adapt, and this season two of the game's best are showing they're willing to win a different way.
Hurried Cats
Back in his Memphis days, Calipari embraced playing uptempo, and knowing Calipari, he had motives beyond the fact that gave him the best chance to win.
His adoption of the dribble-drive-motion offense while at Memphis, for instance, was both tactically smart and calculated.
Calipari found an offense that highlighted the abilities of penetrating guards, and those were the type of talents he wanted on the recruiting trail. The two best players on his 2008 runner-up at Memphis were Derrick Rose and Chris Douglas-Roberts.
He sold them on offensive freedom and the ability to make plays.
"It's about spacing and players making plays," Douglas-Roberts told Sports Illustrated's Grant Wahl back in 2008 for a story about the origins of the dribble-drive offense. "A lot of players who are in conventional styles get bored sometimes because they feel like they can't show what they can do, but this offense lets a player show his strengths."
In addition to being a great basketball coach, Calipari is the best salesman in the game. And this was an offense that was easily marketable to guards, especially point guards.
His success recruiting that position is unmatched over the last 10 years, starting with an amazing five-year run of Rose, Tyreke Evans, John Wall, Brandon Knight and Marquis Teague, who were all one-and-done first-round picks—only Teague fell out of the lottery.
During his years at Kentucky, Calipari has still sold his style as uptempo, but the Wildcats don't always play that way and they don't always run the dribble-drive. (He does start every season practicing the dribble-drive to teach spacing.)
Calipari's defensive principles from his younger years—not wanting to gamble and give up easy buckets—has fit the shot-blocking studs he's had at the back line of his defense. And those big men, like DeMarcus Cousins, Anthony Davis and Karl-Anthony Towns, often have led him to slow the pace and get them inside touches.
But before this current group got together, Calipari had a vision for how this team would play. Back in May when he was asked about the 2016-17 group, he was prophetic.
"Really fast," Calipari said, via John Clay of the Lexington Herald-Leader. "Really fast. You remember our '12 team when we rebounded and the ball was in the basket and you went, 'Did someone throw it down there?' We were that fast. … This team has that kind of speed."
Calipari's title team could play fast. That's true. It had speed at every position and could often run off Davis' blocked shot. But the real strength of that team was its balance—scoring the ball inside and out—and its half-court defense with Davis on the back line swatting away any brave souls who wandered into the lane and dared to shoot in his presence.
Stylistically, Calipari's current team is playing more like the Memphis groups that helped create a brand that attracted the one-and-dones.
| 1. Kentucky, 2016-17 | 75.3 | 10 |
| 2. Memphis, 2005-06 | 74.6 | 12 |
| 3. Memphis, 2002-03 | 71.5 | 107 |
| 3. Kentucky, 2009-10 | 71.5 | 65 |
| 5. Memphis, 2006-07 | 71.2 | 12 |
This group is obviously different, and it's not just the presence of a one-man fast break in point guard De'Aaron Fox, whom Calipari often compares to Wall.
The Wildcats also have an uber-athletic 2-guard in Malik Monk, a second point guard on the floor in Isaiah Briscoe who is at his best driving downhill—never a better time to do that than in transition—a slam-dunking mobile big man in Edrice Adebayo and a power forward off the bench in Derek Willis who has unveiled an affinity (and special talent) for throwing long outlet passes.
"Most years here they rarely get to the fan expectation of what the pace is going to be, but this team is doing it," UK radio play-by-play announcer Tom Leach said.
Embracing the pace obviously starts with Fox, who pushes the ball at every opportunity and is faster with the ball than any player in America. Kentucky's lowest-possession game this season was last Saturday against South Carolina when Fox played only eight minutes because of an ankle injury that sidelined him in the first half.
But if it were just Fox as the lone speed demon, the Cats wouldn't go like they go. Monk has just as much influence, if not more. Calipari has given Monk the freedom to leak out on almost every possession, which is illustrated in his low defensive rebounding numbers. His defensive rebounding rate (6.9 percent) is the worst among starting shooting guards in the Calipari era at UK, per KenPom.com.
Typically, as soon as a shot goes up, he takes off.
Calipari also gives Monk the greenest of lights. He takes a higher percentage of UK's shots (30.5 percent), per KenPom.com, than any player Cal has coached at UK.
Part of Kentucky's strategy is to get the ball up to Monk and let him see if he can get a shot before the defense sets.
"He's not out there just jacking balls, but I've got to let him go some because he does some crazy stuff," Calipari said after the South Carolina game. "Not being selfish, he just can score."
The challenge Calipari has is trying to reel Monk in just a bit. Letting him "go" allows for days like Dec. 17, when he went off for 47 points against North Carolina. But there are other nights like last week against Mississippi State when the shot selection is suspect and he goes 5-of-14.
One other reason for the Cats to play fast is the lack of shooting from their perimeter players, outside of Monk, in the half court. This allows a set defense to pack the paint.
But Kentucky's offense is evolving with the improved play of Adebayo. The freshman big man is averaging 14.9 points on 72.7 percent shooting in SEC play, yet he's attempting fewer than eight shots per game during that stretch.
Calipari has encouraged his guards to get Adebayo more post-up touches, and as young as the Wildcats are, Calipari is still trying to dictate what he can control.
"This team, even as fast as they're playing, when they get into a set, you'll see him calling stuff from the sideline," Leach said.
But simple math shows a UK shot in transition is better than a shot in the half court, and Kentucky has scored the most transition points of any power-conference team in America.
| 116.4 | 34 | 96.7 | 29 | 524 | 2 |
And trying to prevent that is more difficult than it might seem.
"They go from defense to offense faster this particular year than just about anybody in college basketball," Self said.
How Bill Self Ended Up Playing Small Ball
Kansas has been building to play small ball the last few years, even if it wasn't intentional.
In the 2013-14 season, the Jayhawks began to develop a low-post monster in Joel Embiid. KU's staff anticipated that Embiid would be a big part of its offense over those next few seasons, and no one anticipated he'd be a one-and-done talent.
The Jayhawks hit the next two years on the recruiting trail, landing 5-star big men Cliff Alexander and Cheick Diallo, but neither thrived in KU's system and both left for the NBA after just one season.
KU's best low-post threat post-Embiid was power forward Perry Ellis, who was more dangerous facing up to the basket than he was on post-ups.
So while Kansas has not played "small" these last few years, Self has been less reliant on post-ups. The chart below shows the percentage of KU's possessions that ended in post-ups, dating back to 2012 when the offense leaned heavily on Thomas Robinson.
| 2011-12 | 11.8 | 91.5 |
| 2012-13 | 12.7 | 87.9 |
| 2013-14 | 12.6 | 92.3 |
| 2014-15 | 8.6 | 88.5 |
| 2015-16 | 9.1 | 97.5 |
| 2016-17 | 9.9 | 81.9 |
Self was well aware coming into this season that he would be more reliant on his guards. With Frank Mason and Devonte' Graham returning along with the addition of Josh Jackson, that was the strength of the roster. But he still didn't anticipate going all-in on small ball.
"I didn't think we were going to play small that much," Self said. "I didn't envision that. I thought with Udoka [Azubuike] and Landen [Lucas] and Carlton [Bragg Jr.], we'd have three guys that we could play inside.
"Then what I envisioned was playing small and playing Josh at the 4 maybe 10 minutes a game, late-game situations, get your best ball-handlers in the game."
The realization that his best lineups featured four perimeter players on the floor started to take place in late September and early October, Self said.
Self still tried to start a big lineup, but sophomore power forward Carlton Bragg had a short leash. Self was already playing the small lineups more and he went all-in in Game 6, swapping Bragg for guard Lagerald Vick in the starting lineup. (Junior wing Svi Mykhailiuk has since taken over as the fifth starter.)
Once Self realized this was how he was going to have to play, he called one of his former assistants, Doc Sadler. Sadler, who is now the head coach at Southern Miss, spent one season at Iowa State after leaving KU.
Self wanted to study how then-Iowa State head coach Fred Hoiberg used former do-everything forward Georges Niang, and he picked Sadler's brain along with studying tape of ISU's offense. It was also Hoiberg who put the idea in Self's head a year ago. Hoiberg visited KU's office last year while visiting his daughter, who attends Kansas. He said he thought KU had the personnel to play that way at times, and Self tried it out the next game for four possessions.
But to give you an idea how rare it was for the Jayhawks, those four possessions were the only ones all season KU went small. This season they're playing that way far more than a traditional look.
Iowa State had a lot of actions that involved Niang in dribble handoffs, and that's been a go-to for Kansas. Self typically opens games in similar action trying to get Jackson a look.
"We wanted to open up the floor as much as possible to allow Josh to play to his strengths," KU assistant coach Norm Roberts said. "He's such a good passer, and he's long, and he's good at getting to the basket."
The results have made the experimentation out of necessity a blessing in disguise for the Jayhawks. Self's offense is always near the top nationally in efficiency—the Jayhawks have ranked top 10 in adjusted offensive efficiency six times over the last 10 seasons—but this group is his best ever.
| 2016-17 | 121.6 |
| 2015-16 | 119.0 |
| 2013-14 | 118.7 |
| 2009-10 | 116.8 |
| 2007-08 | 116.7 |
The blueprint is pretty simple: Get KU's talented guards in space and let them go create. And when help defense cuts off a drive, KU's guards have played unselfish and made a point to always hit the open man.
"Even though we're playing small, there's still an emphasis of getting the ball in the lane," Roberts said. "But now getting the ball is not only having big guys inside and going high-low—it's more of let's drive the ball into the paint."
When National Player of the Year candidate Frank Mason does this, it's easy for everyone else to get in line.
It also helps that Self can space the floor with shooters. The Jayhawks are shooting 41.8 percent from deep.
"It's made it a lot easier because the floor has been open and spread," Roberts said. "What it's trying to get guys to do, a lot like San Antonio, is open man takes open shot. Let's make the extra pass. Let's move the basketball. And I think our guys are really enjoying that and moving the basketball until we get an open shot."
College basketball fans have all benefited this season from two great coaches willing to try something different, because Kansas and Kentucky are two wildly entertaining teams to watch.
It's always must-see television when these two programs play each other—last year's game was an overtime thriller won by Kansas at Allen Fieldhouse—but this year could be another level of fun.
Are these teams—and styles—outliers in career arcs of Calipari and Self, or the beginning of change?
Since personnel has dictated both styles, it's probably the former.
So enjoy it while it lasts and add both adaptations to the resumes of these legendary coaches. Not every coach is willing to go against what they've had so much success doing in the past. And for that, Calipari and Self deserve a lot of credit.
C.J. Moore covers college basketball and football for Bleacher Report. You can follow him on Twitter: @CJMooreBR.
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