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The common theme and or belief is that college basketball lives and dies by the guard position. To further than that, fact is that the last couple of decades of March Madness has borne out the theories of the necessity of good guards.
The early knock on Kentucky's guards is that they have a long way to go to get up to championship standards. The last game against Louisville showed a big improvement in the Harrison twins play. The down-side of their performance in tandem was a three assist to seven turnover ratio. In fairness of these stats is that they came against a team that was leading the country in forcing turnovers.
Dominique Hawkins is a key component in the Wildcat's guard rotation. He bring an all-out level of hustle, toughness and will to win. A loss to U of L would have been more devastating to him than perhaps any other player on the squad. "I remember crying when UK loss to Louisville - but I was real little," Hawkins said. Cal said after every game he get text messages on how much they enjoy seeing Hawkins play. Calipari said it is not all about him - it's about the team. "He does all the right things, he is where he needs to be."
Recently Andrew Harrison stated about how he thought he and his fellow freshmen teammates were going to come into Kentucky and blow everybody off the floor. He said - "It's a grind every game." Andrew Harrison said they are starting talk to each other more on the court - in jest he said "because there is nobody else to talk to." Calipari said that when school is in session everybody has his own schedule and now throughout the (BOOT- CAMP) phase everybody's schedule is together.
Cal in alluding to the play in practice of Andrew Harrison, he said "The other day is was assist, basket dunk about four times in succession down the floor. Then five minutes later he was standing straight up." the coach said he stopped thing and addressed Andrew Harrison, "You are standing straight up but that's the way he's been doing for eighteen years.
Andrew Harrison said his worst habit was standing straight up. "Yeah, you should've seen him the other day," an excited Cal said. "He went down and we threw him the ball and it was basket-dunk-assist-basket, it was like four straight times in succession when he didn't have it and he just blew by them. And we're looking around like wow maybe he got it. And then about five minutes later he was standing straight up. I stopped it (drills) and said oops you're standing because he's done it eighteen years that way."
Andrew Harrison said among the options available to his as a guard in Cal's offense, the first priority is to pass the ball ahead to the wings. And Aaron Harrison said his first priority is to drive the ball and get it to the post. For the first time since John Calipari first arrived at UK his offense is showing us the dribble/drive. But then perhaps the offense could show us a little more pass symbolic of the Chuck Hayes, Gerald Fitch, and Eric Daniels passing wizardry. Though two of them weren't guards their play reflected that of guards - the ones that rule the roost in college basketball.
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