As it has become apparent over the past five completed men’s college basketball seasons that experienced teams have been dominating the NCAA Tournament, a segment of Kentucky fans have implored UK to change directions from its reliance on one-and-done freshmen.
It may be more out of necessity than preference, but, for 2021-22 at least, Wildcats Coach John Calipari has heeded the call to change.
By one metric, Kentucky in the coming season will field one of the most experienced teams in its modern basketball history.
The players on UK’s roster will enter 2021-22 having made a whopping 367 career college starts.
That is more than twice as many career starts as the previous high for a Kentucky team in the Calipari era — the 2014-15 Cats that went 38-1 began that season with 164 career starts.
To grasp just how experienced UK will be in 2021-22, consider:
— Kentucky’s 1995-96 NCAA championship team — which started two seniors, two juniors and a sophomore — entered its title season with a cumulative 233 career college starts.
— UK’s 1997-98 national championship squad — which started two seniors and three juniors — began that year with 164 total college starts on its roster.
— In the one-and-done-centric Calipari era, Kentucky has never begun a season with a player on its roster who has made 100 career college starts.
For 2021-22, UK will have two such players.
After starting four seasons at Davidson, guard Kellan Grady is using the NCAA’s “free year of eligibility” (a COVID-19 relief measure) to play a graduate-transfer season at Kentucky.
The 6-foot-5 Grady started 113 of the 115 games in which he played for the “other Wildcats” at Davidson.
Meanwhile, returning UK guard Davion Mintz is also using his “free year” to play an extra season of college hoops. The 6-3 guard started 21 games for the Cats last year after starting 79 in his first three seasons of college basketball playing for Creighton.
Grady (113) and Mintz (100) will enter 2021-22 with more career college starts individually than entire Calipari-era Kentucky teams had collectively entering 2010-11 (37 total starts), 2012-13 (49), 2013-14 (46), 2015-16 (52), 2016-17 (54) and 2017-18 (23).
(Quiz: Before Grady and Mintz this coming season, what Calipari-era, Kentucky player began a year having made the most career starts?
Answer: Reid Travis, who started 82 games at Stanford before using his graduate-transfer season in 2018-19 to play for UK).
— In the first 12 seasons with Calipari at the helm, Kentucky had only eight total players enter a season having started at least 40 college games.
When the 2021-22 season tips off, UK will boast five such players — Grady (113), Mintz (100), Iowa transfer CJ Fredrick (52), Georga transfer Sahvir Wheeler (43) and West Virginia transfer Oscar Tshiebwe (41).
(To grasp how fundamentally different an era in which today’s college hoops coaches work, consider that Fredrick at Iowa and Tshiebwe at West Virginia started every game in which they appeared at their previous schools, yet transferred to Kentucky anyway).
— During Calipari’s coaching tenure, Kentucky has never begun a season with more than six players on its roster who have started a college basketball game.
This winter, UK will begin with nine players who have made at least one college start.
In addition to the five Wildcats with 40 or more career starts, Keion Brooks (nine), Jacob Toppin (five), Lance Ware (3) and Dontaie Allen (one) have also all heard their names called in the starting lineup at least once as college players.
Now, if you are the kind of UK basketball fan who needs something to worry about, you can wonder if Kentucky suddenly has too much of a good thing.
During last season’s brutal 9-16 slog, the Wildcats fielded a mismatched roster with only two true guards and a lot of tall, skinny front-court players with similar skills.
This coming season, when you factor in well-regarded incoming freshmen recruits Daimion Collins, Bryce Hopkins and TyTy Washington with the nine veterans, Kentucky looks to have a far-more complementary roster while boasting 12 legitimate players.
It will be fascinating to see if Calipari can keep that many quality players content and pulling in the same direction.
What is certain is that the teams that have won the past five NCAA championships have been built upon an “old is gold” philosophy.
It may be a one-time anomaly forced on Calipari by last season’s competitive collapse, but Kentucky in 2021-22 has a roster filled with proven, quality college basketball players.
If you are among those Wildcats fans who have been calling for that, this coming season shapes up as one you should relish.
