After suffering a pair of losses last week against Alabama and Auburn, John Calipari suggested the five players who were willing to "fight" the most would be logging the majority of the playing time for the Wildcats moving forward.
On Tuesday, the Kentucky head coach hinted that he may be taking a slightly more analytic approach over sheer will and determination.
"We have one group that really guards, .5 or .6 points per possession," Calipari said via Zoom conference call prior to the Wildcats' game Wednesday at Georgia. "So then you would say, why don't you just leave them in the whole time? OK. That group is scoring .6 points per possession. (Laughs) So now you would say, well, you can't leave them in because they can't score or just slightly more than they're giving up. But the game would be 42-41.
"And then there's other lineups that we have to get on the floor more because their points per possession are in that 1.2, 1.3 range -- 1.35 -- which means that's as good as they are in the country. Then you look back and say, how can that group defend and what are they giving up?"
To date, the combinations that Calipari has utilized have not panned out. His lineup moves were criticized heavily after Saturday's 66-59 loss at Auburn when reserves Dontaie Allen and Jacob Toppin -- who led Kentucky with eight points apiece in the first half -- played sparingly in the second half as the Cats struggled to score.
Kentucky sits at 4-8 overall and 3-2 in the SEC, facing the very real possibility of missing the NCAA Tournament for the first time since 2013 when a late-season injury to center Nerlens Noel sidetracked the team.
The UK boss maintains there is still time to right the ship but acknowledged on Tuesday that a sense of urgency must prevail. The Cats' Davion Mintz used a stronger term.
"We have to play with some sort of desperation, especially where we are right now in the season," the graduate transfer guard said. "(Calipari) is making it very clear to us that he's only going to play five guys who are going to go out there and be desperate."
Asked how desperate the Cats feel right now, Mintz said, "Very."
"It's been a really tough season," he added. "I can't lie. It's been hard. We understand that we have a job to do. We obviously can't give up. We've got a lot of people depending on us, a lot of people supporting us still. There's no reason to put our heads down now. We've just got to keep pushing through it."
So can a more analytic approach help save UK?
"This is tweaking, analyzing, looking at numbers," Calipari said. "At the end of the day, I told them, you guys can be as good as anybody in the country. You've got to get on a roll. That means you've got to score some baskets, you've got to stay defensively where you are, and now we gotta make easy plays for each other. We've got to open up the court a little bit."
To wit, Kentucky is currently ranked No. 24 in Ken Pomeroy's defensive efficiency rankings. The Cats are 91st in offensive efficiency.
Calipari said he posed the following question to the team during Monday's practice: Why aren't we making baskets?
One of UK's walk-ons, Riley Welch, spoke up.
"Because our shot selection stinks," he said.
Calipari followed, 'Why is that? Because everyone is trying to make baskets for themselves.'
"Again, you could say, 'Coach, you also miss wide-open shots and free throws.' We do. We do. But there are too many tough shots that we take that we shouldn't, and it's usually early in the shot clock. But we're working on it."
Calipari pointed to one of his famous "tweaks" from the 2013-14 season that helped the Cats turn around a difficult regular season and make the Final Four.
"I did something with Andrew Harrison... and he ended up scoring more points per game than he did prior to (the change) as his whole focus was on creating shots for somebody," Calipari said. "And what had happened was, it became contagious. It was contagious. Now everybody passed. We had a passfest. And all of the sudden we went (gestures climbing higher)."
