John Calipari (Vicky Graff Photo)
Remember the Louisville loss earlier this year when coach John Calipari said he could not play Dontaie Allen the second half even when Kentucky was struggling to score because he had not played the first half. That was Calipari’s rule — a rule he broke recently when he played Lance Ware in the second half due to foul trouble after he didn’t play the first half. The coach simply said his rule, so he could break it.
He broke it again Saturday in UK’s 71-67 loss to Florida. Allen didn’t play the first half when UK got 26 points the first nine minutes and still had a 39-38 halftime lead after blowing a 10-point lead. However, with the Cats struggling to score in the second half against Florida’s zone, he put Allen in — twice.
He only got to play for four minutes and didn’t take/get a shot. Calipari said after the game that was “disappointing” based on what he told his team.
“I put Dontaie in and said find him. Guess what? They didn’t look at him,” said Calipari. “I don’t know what it was. But we were not connected today like we have been.”
Anyone who saw the game could believe that. Yet UK was up one point at halftime and had the lead again late in the game.
“It shows you we can do this. Somebody has got to make a shot, a dagger, a block,” the coach said.
He pointed out the offensive rebound BJ Boston had late in the game but let it get “jerked out of his hand” by Florida.
“So many plays like that I look at and if you want to win, that doesn’t happen,” Calipari said. “Don’t drive Jacob (Toppin) and just throw the ball on the floor. Don’t do that.
“I thought we were getting this one. As bad as we were playing, I thought we were still getting it. But we leave a 3-point shooter open (late in the game). What in the world just happened? We have got to have basketball sense.”
That seems like a fair request and made me wonder why players who were told to get the ball to Allen did not. So I asked Toppin why they didn’t do what Calipari said he told them to do.
“The (Florida) zone was very effective. We could not get him open and find shots he could make,” Toppin said. “Every time we were trying to get him the ball and we would hold the ball and that just slowed down the offense. We are better when we are playing fast.”
That could be interpreted in a lot of ways. Maybe Kentucky didn’t run plays to get Allen open. Maybe he didn’t work hard enough to get open. Or maybe the players were impatient because they wanted to play faster rather than move the ball around which seems like the more logical explanation.
“We are a better team when we are running the floor,” Toppin said. “They were staying compacted (in the zone) and we could not get into the paint. We couldn’t figure how to penetrate.”
