Blue Platoon: UK Basketball 2014-15 Preview

LEXINGTON, Ky. - John Calipari knows it. Andrew Harrison knows it. With eight of the top 10 players back from an NCAA runner-up, plus four new McDonald's All Americans — bringing the total to nine burger boys on the roster — the only clear stumbling block in front of the University of Kentucky basketball team this season is playing time.

Or, more accurately, lack thereof. There are only so many minutes to go around, and the Wildcats will legitimately be a dozen deep with players good enough to start for almost every other program in the country. What happens when someone grows unhappy with his role?

"That could really mess up a team," said Harrison, the sophomore point guard whose own minutes figure to dip with electric freshman Tyler Ulis now in the mix. "But I feel like that's my job to make sure it doesn't happen. You got to fight. You got to come to practice and fight. You have to prove it.

"I'm going to make sure. If I see a guy struggling with their time, I'm going to talk to them and tell them they have to come to practice and show it."

He'll get plenty of help from his head coach in driving home that point. When the announcements started rolling in back in April and – surprise! – six guys who likely would've been drafted decided to return for another season at UK, Calipari saw this coming. His wheels started turning. He came up with a plan.

It was unveiled on the team's trip to the Bahamas this summer for six exhibition games against international competition: a two-platoon system of separate five-man units, each playing almost exactly half the game. And it worked to near-perfection.

Opponents were exhausted while nine Wildcats averaged at least five points. Every player had at least one moment to shine. Most notable, everyone was smiling. The question now: Will that still be the case when the games actually count?

"The players are bought into it," Calipari said. "They liked it. They all thought it was terrific. The biggest thing will be the clutter that will circle, which is the clutter of the ego and all the other things. But we have a couple things I'm going to do to try to make it clear how they're playing.

"One thing I would say: Does Michael Jordan, in a 40-minute game, really have to be out there 32 minutes to show you he can play?"

To that end, Calipari also created a new position on his staff, hiring Joel Justus as "director of men's basketball analytics." A major part of his job will be to create statistical reports that put a premium on each player's efficiency over his raw numbers.

Because Calipari knows what's coming. He sees the potential pitfall out in the distance.

"If I'm going to two-platoon, the numbers will matter," he said. "For the players to see what they're accomplishing … and it's good for everyone else to see what those numbers say. Most teams, you're going to play between 32 and 34 minutes — the best players in the country — so every one of our guys gets rated to 34 minutes. What do those numbers mean?"

He hopes they mean a happy roster that is willing to share both the ball and the bench and is more concerned with helping UK win its ninth national title than where each individual will be drafted. That's where Calipari's other shrewd move comes in.

He's holding an on-campus combine later this month to showcase each player in front of NBA scouts. His message is twofold: I have your best interest at heart, but let's get this out of the way now and focus on the team concept until April.

Calipari knows, though, that he is in virtually uncharted territory, that this remains a potentially combustible experiment.

"It's never been done where the players have benefited," he said. "Now, it's been done where the program benefited and coaches benefited, but it's never been done where players benefited. That's the challenge we'll have. I think that if you can get two groups that are balanced, yet good enough, you can do. We have some time. We have to see.

"I'd love to play that way, because it includes 10 guys. And really, it includes all 12, because even the two that are left, you're in a rotation of injury (or) if a guard's not playing well, you're in; if a big's not playing well, you're in. So everybody's into the rotation."

All of that, and the potentially devastating effect on opponents — "you could just swamp people, just keep coming," Calipari said, almost salivating — are wonderful in theory. The Wildcats seem to believe they can effectively put it into practice.

Sophomore center Dakari Johnson, one of three UK players 6 feet 11 or taller who are projected NBA first-rounders, believes a turbulent regular season followed by a triumphant NCAA Tournament march last spring taught the Cats lessons that will help whenever playing time pops up as an issue.

"We just discovered if we work hard and we just play together as a unit and not worry about anything else — not worry about numbers or anything — this is what happens," Johnson said. "We know we can do something special as long as we just all stay focused and not worry about any minutes and just do what we have to do individually on the court.

"That's something that we have to take care of as a team. We can't let people split away or get frustrated about that and just start wandering off, away from the team. That's something we'll have to be mature enough to handle."

Kyle Tucker can be reached at (502) 582-4361. Follow him on Twitter @KyleTucker_CJ.