Calipari Says This Kentucky Team Is Built For March

After Tuesday’s win against Ole Miss, Kentucky’s John Calipari clarified on what he means when he says this Kentucky team is built for March. Having the ability to score, having multiple go-to players, and being a low turnover team are a big part of it.

Calipari loves how elite this Kentucky team is offensively, and how much weapons there are. “In the NCAA tournament you can’t score 65, 63, 62. You can maybe in one game but you’ll get beat. You’ve got to be able to score points. We can do it,” he said. “You’ve got to have a player that can go off in a game so you can advance. We have a couple of those. You can’t be a high turnover team because the team you are going to play, they are in the NCAA tournament. They are going to be a low turnover team. We are a low turnover team.”

The thing that can hurt them in March is their defense, and how much they are lacking physicality. “The issue is will we be physical enough,” Calipari said. “The reason we were physical today, DJ is physical, Tre is physical, Ugonna is physical, Adou is physical. Now you’re playing four of your top eight are physical players. They are going to bang. That was one of our issues. 50-50 balls. We missed some today again. Justin didn’t dive up for the ball. He tried to pick it up with one hand and threw it to them. 50-50 rebounds. Tre helped us today. We are still not where we need to be, and lastly, defensively you got to be more connected. So, if we get those things squared away.”

It’s clear that Kentucky has all of the tools offensively to make a March run, but they will need to put everything together on defense if they want to have a better chance on a run in March.