By: LARRY VAUGHT
The first time Kentucky coach John Calipari had a team play play at Pauley Pavilion in Los Angeles was when he was coaching at Massachusetts and his team was invited to the Wooden Classic in 1994. Kansas beat UMass and UCLA beat Kentucky in the other game.
“Who doesn’t belong in that bunch?” joked Calipari after Monday’s win over Illinois State.
The Wildcats will play again at UCLA Thursday night, but this time it is just a regular-season game against the Bruins.
Calipari recalled again Monday how legendary UCLA coach John Wooden told him once that he was playing too many players, and Calipari said Wooden was right.
“He said, but I understand why you do it, recruiting and transfers and all the other things you got to do. But understand that the way you’re going to build your best team is play less people,” Calipari recalled.
Calipari hopes he can play point guard Tyler Ulis, who hyperextended his elbow last week and missed Monday’s game. He’s been listed as questionable.
“If Tyler is healthy, yeah. If he’s not healthy, no, it’s bad, bad timing. But we’ll see. He was half coaching on bench (against Illinois State), telling me who to take out,” Calipari said.
The Kentucky coach said playing at UCLA is special.
“It’s unbelievable. UCLA is just, it’s one of those schools that has the opportunity to do everything and basketball and football and every — if I’m not mistaken and somebody can check — but I think they have won more national titles in all sports than any other program. The campus, which is kind of landlocked because it’s in where it is, and in Westwood, but they redid Pauley, I’ve seen it, really nice building,” Calipari said.
“The Hall of Fame there, they have John Wooden’s office, the way it was encased. The history of that program. And I think us, having an opportunity to go there — and we’re going to have a couple days to practice, to see if we get some stuff fixed here — it’s going to be neat. A neat trip.”
Freshman guard Isaiah Briscoe said UCLA’s history was “way too far back” for him to know about the championships the Bruins had won, and that he did not watch last year when UK blitzed UCLA in Chicago.
“Every game is a big deal. They’re a good team from what I hear,” Briscoe said.
Kentucky jumped on UCLA 24-0 last year and cruised to the win over the Bruins, who won a NCAA tourney game in March. He says what Illinois State did to his team means a lot more in Thursday’s game than last year’s contest in Chicago that UK dominated.
“If they watch this game, they’re going to post us up. Tony Parker is, every time they throw it, they’re going to go at our bigs,” Calipari said. “So we better have some ideas what have we’re going to do. (Coach) Steve (Alford) is terrific at what he does. He’s figured it out. I’ve coached against him a couple times.
“Last year was an outlier. I had a ridiculous team. And they would go into a game like that to smoke somebody, like they did Kansas. They would go in with that mentality. This team is, we don’t have that mentality.”
Freshman guard Jamal Murray says that is because the Cats are still trying to figure out how to just play a full 40 minutes.
“We’re just trying to go out there and have passion,” Murray said.
Playing at Pauley Pavilliion could help that.
“I came to play basketball and have a good time, have a good college experience. Going on the road and playing a good team is always going to be fun,” Murray said Monday. “We’ll just hopefully have Tyler back and have a couple practices and be ready for them.”
Junior center Marcus Lee, who had his second double-double of the season Monday, is a California native and is looking forward to playing at UCLA.
“We never go that far. We never go past Texas probably. But I’m really excited to go home. I’ve been waiting for this for three years to go home and have my friends and family come watch, or just to have my team come see where I live and see what’s the difference between Kentucky and California. So I’m really loving going home,” Lee, who lives six hours away, said. California is really big. I’m in northern California and we’re going to southern. So it’s still quite a ways, but it’s still the same state. I’m just glad to be anywhere near home.”
Lee said as soon as UK played UCLA in Chicago last year he was hoping there would be a game in California.
“Once we played them last year, I was like, ‘Oh we have to go there at some point.’ Once we finally put out that I was going home, that was the first thing I put. I tried to figure things out as quick as possible,” he said.
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Originally Posted by catmanjack
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