Summer basketball preview: Calipari trusts Hawkins in the clutch

Dominique Hawkins hasn't exactly been recruited over since he arrived at Kentucky several years ago.

Recruited over implies that things haven't worked out as planned, and a coach has simply turned the page on a player by looking to the next batch of recruits.

No, that wouldn't be right.

Hawkins was never expected to be a leading scorer or more than a role player who might find his niche at Kentucky.

If Hawkins' time at Kentucky is viewed in that light, as it should be, then he's had a pretty successful career in Lexington. And it's not as though he's been irrelevant. Far from it. From his contributions during Kentucky's improbable 2014 run to the national championship game through his timely three-pointers against Louisville last year, Hawkins has had plenty of opportunities to make a difference, even as more talented players and higher-ranked recruits have cycled in and out of the program.

Last year Calipari said, of Hawkins, that he knows what he's getting when he's on the court. That's always been true, and it'll be true again. For a program with so few constants except change, one more reliable constant is helpful.

Hawkins has been one of the better on-ball defenders on every Kentucky team he's been a part of. In all of Hawkins' years with the Wildcats, with two Final Four teams and last year's squad that was widely viewed as capable of another March run, Hawkins has been a defensive stopper who can exert maximum energy every time he's on the court, because of the modest role he's occupied.

He's never done much offensively, but then again, he's never been expected or asked to do much. His scoring average has increased modestly every year, from 0.8 points per game as a freshman to 1.3 as a sophomore and 2.3 last year. But in all of Hawkins' minutes and games last season he attempted all of 46 shots.

It's an odd thing, then, that Hawkins' greatest mark on the 2015-16 Wildcats was his three-point shooting. Actually, it was his three-point shooting in one game, against Louisville, that most fans will remember. With good reason.

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The 6-foot guard from Richmond, Ky., was 3-4 from deep against the Cardinals, and Kentucky needed every one of those timely shots to win a hard-fought 75-73 game. Without Hawkins' shooting against Louisville it's a near certainty the Cards would have downed the Cats in Rupp Arena, but Hawkins became just the latest in a long line of unlikely Kentucky heroes in their stretch of dominance against their rival neighbors to the west.

Before Hawkins' 3/4 effort from deep against Louisville he hadn't exactly established himself as a guard with range that had to be respected. He was 22/80 (27.5-percent) from long range in his two-plus seasons leading up to that mini-barrage.

Two-thirds of Hawkins' field goal attempts were behind the arc last year. After the Louisville game he never hit more than one three-pointer in a game for the rest of the season, although with Tyler Ulis and Jamal Murray playing the vast majority of minutes at two guard positions it's not as though he was called upon often.

One thing Hawkins has proven at Kentucky, especially last year, is that he's capable of producing at a better-than-expected rate, offensively, when he gets minutes. He scored seven points in 24 minutes against Illinois State early in the non-conference schedule last year, and then came his 26-minute, 13-point showing against Louisville just a few weeks later. If you wondered why he didn't do much of anything offensively in the four games separating those contests, it's because Hawkins never played more than eight minutes.

When Hawkins earned 13 minutes against Georgia on February 9, he scored nine points.

He's never been a player who will be a sustained offensive threat off the bench, but because opponents don't game plan much for Hawkins, when he has the ball, he's capable of finding an open shot, and his tendencies haven't been scouted as thoroughly.

Calipari has often sought out Hawkins as a potential spark plug when the team is struggling or lackadaisical, and Hawkins has always responded with energy. Kentucky rolled past Alabama by 26 points in the SEC Tournament last year, but the game started slow for the Cats. Calipari credited Hawkins with sparking the team after that game.

While playing rotations often tighten as the season wears on, particularly with John Calipari, Hawkins saw more minutes the Cats got into March. He averaged less than 10 minutes on the season, but played anywhere between 10 and 20 minutes in five of Kentucky's last seven games.

Those increased minutes were a change from the 2014-15 season, Kentucky's platoon year, when Hawkins played only 14 minutes over the Cats' last 14 games. But it wasn't totally new.

Hawkins' longest period of sustained minutes came in the first half of his freshman season, before a mid-season stretch when Calipari had him sit for most of the games. But late in Hawkins' freshman year, into the Cats' tournament run through Louisville, Michigan and Wisconsin, Calipari went to him again - double-digit minutes in each of those games.

Take out the platoon year, a unique year indeed, and one could say that Calipari has demonstrated a strong degree of trust in Hawkins, particularly when the games matter most. That's not totally surprising given that Calipari is a defensive-minded coach who wants stoppers in the game when the games are really significant.

Hawkins broke his hand last preseason and Calipari's displeasure was a sign of just how important he thought the junior could have been to the team. He bounced back, but sprained his ankle early in the year, and that injury kept him out of several games.

Again, Calipari referenced Hawkins' importance.

“We need Dom back," Calipari said at the time. "If Dom does what I think, there will be a couple other guys in positions where they’re not going to get many minutes.”

Hawkins' increased minutes at the end of the season proved those words true.

Tyler Ulis wasn't chopped liver as a defensive point guard. But even last year, Hawkins' defense in the backcourt stood out when he was in the game.

This year there's one thing working against Hawkins' quest for minutes. All three of Kentucky's potential starters in the backcourt - De'Aaron Fox, Malik Monk and Isaiah Briscoe - are expected to be more than capable defenders. In fact, their defensive prowess should be one of this UK team's greatest strengths. Perhaps the greatest strength.

So it's not as though John Calipari will need to call upon Hawkins to provide a defensive upgrade against certain opponents.

Still, Hawkins' calling card is his ability to hound the guard with the ball in front of him, to provide pressure wherever Calipari wants him to on the court, and to disrupt the offensive flow on the perimeter.

Kentucky's perimeter defense, which should be fantastic in 2016-17 thanks to Hawkins and all the others just mentioned, will not suffer when he's on the court. And that's significant.

While Briscoe's return ensured that Kentucky would have sufficient back court depth even following the departures of Ulis, Jamal Murray and Charles Matthews, Hawkins should still get valuable minutes. It's a near certainty that Kentucky's starting back court will have at least some foul trouble from time to time. That's a fact of basketball that no team can elude.

If Kentucky starts three guards - Fox, Monk and Briscoe - then in order for the Cats to remain small when one is out of the game, Calipari may need to call upon Hawkins.

Will Hawkins be a three-point threat for the Cats this year? That's probably unlikely, and if it happens, there's been nothing to suggest it should be predicted. The Louisville game last year stands as an exception to the rule thus far, although his overall .370 clip from deep last year was much improved (still a small sample).

Last year Calipari said at one point that, especially with Willis out of the game, Hawkins needed to be a three-point shooter.

"You don't have to make them all," Calipari told the junior Hawkins. "You just can't miss them all."

And that's probably the attitude Calipari will have on Hawkins this year. If the shots are there, Calipari wants Hawkins to take them.

Calipari hasn't had to break Hawkins down too much. His bad habits, if he has any, aren't the kind that hurt the team. Calipari has called Hawkins "a team player who will play within himself." Sometimes players who play within themselves have to be encouraged to seize opportunities, while they don't need the flag cautioning against doing too much.

John Robic, at the recent SEC summer teleconference, told reporters that Hawkins has done a good job of showing the young players the right way to go about their business. Hawkins is unlikely to ever be a vocal or emotional leader, but his lead-by-example approach is the kind that will help in a quiet, mostly unseen way over a period of time.

It won't be surprising at all if Hawkins again sees his minutes spike when the Cats get into March, from the SEC Tournament through the Big Dance. Calipari has done that with Hawkins twice in three years, and although the Cats have three guards who will see more minutes than Hawkins, he'll be a senior and that proven defensive commodity that Calipari trusts.

Calipari has been creative with his lineup combinations that have included Hawkins. At one point last year he had Hawkins on the floor in an unlikely three-guard lineup featuring Ulis, Murray, Derek Willis and Isaac Humphries.

Having Hawkins on the floor with both Ulis and Murray was possible, perhaps, because that pair of peers was fantastic on offense.

Big March minutes, defensive prowess and the occasional three-point shot will likely be Hawkins' role with Kentucky again, and as perhaps the fourth guard on a very young team, he's still got a role to play.

"We’ve seen him in NCAA Tournaments do it," the Cats' coach said of Hawkins last season. "So we know what he is."