Will John Calipari play four ‘point guards’ at the same time this season? Sounds like it.

When the opportunity arises, John Calipari rarely passes on a chance to point out his track record of playing multiple point guards at the same time.

Sometimes it’s in direct response to a question about Kentucky’s basketball style of the moment. Often it’s an indirect recruiting pitch to let possible future Wildcats out there know there’s always a place for playmakers in Lexington, no matter how crowded the backcourt.

UK’s coach is quick to point out his first team featured John Wall and Eric Bledsoe, and things worked out just fine for them. Occasionally he’ll bring up the more recent, three-headed backcourt of Ashton Hagans, Tyrese Maxey and Immanuel Quickley from the 2019-20 season, claiming every time that the trio could have led the Cats to a national title if the COVID-19 pandemic hadn’t led to the cancellation of that year’s NCAA Tournament.

Calipari’s hyping of his next backcourt goes even further.

Forget going with two or three point guards. Calipari says he’s going to play four of them this season.

And, if you subscribe to the Kentucky coach’s definition of what constitutes a “point guard,” this isn’t hyperbole. He’s really going to do it.

Calipari laid out his latest plan during his various meetings with reporters at the GLOBL JAM in Canada earlier this month. Kentucky’s 2023 recruiting class features three five-star-caliber guys often listed as “combo guards” — D.J. Wagner, Rob Dillingham and Reed Sheppard — and all three have vast experience running the offense for their previous teams.

This UK team also features Antonio Reeves, a scoring guard who was pressed onto the point at times last season and played plenty on the ball in his previous three seasons at Illinois State. Another member of that 2023 class is Justin Edwards, a 6-8 guard and projected NBA lottery pick who can get to the basket at will. Then there’s UK returnee Adou Thiero, now a 6-6 (possibly 6-7) sophomore who played point guard in high school before a late growth spurt.

Add in summer transfer Tre Mitchell — a heady, 6-9 power forward who was third on the team in assists at the GLOBL JAM — and you have another potential playmaker for UK’s offense.

In the second game of the trip — an impressive 93-69 victory over host Canada — the Wildcats ended up with 27 assists, nine turnovers and lots of praise from their Hall of Fame coach, who trotted out one possible lineup as an example of what he expects during the 2023-24 season.

“You could have Reed, D.J., Robert and Adou — you’ve got four point guards,” Calipari said. “Well, what happens? You get 27 assists and you get nine turnovers. When you have guys that aren’t skilled that way, it’s a different game. You have to try and create shots and all that. You don’t have to on this kind of team.”

Kentucky’s assist numbers for the entire tournament were nothing less than astounding.

The Wildcats finished the four games with 103 dimes — 25.8 assists per game. The record for any Kentucky team in 14 seasons of the Calipari era is 16.1 assists per game. Only five of his UK teams have finished in the top 100 nationally in assists per game, many of those squads overly relying on individual creation and/or offensive rebounding to get points.

Now, these Cats will face much tougher competition at times than they saw in Canada, and the FIBA rules — most notably, a 24-second shot clock — led to more possessions and more points than UK will get during the college season, but one particular stat showed just how much the Cats shared the ball.

Kentucky’s 103 assists came on 142 made baskets. That means UK tallied an assist on 72.5 percent of its made shots, and that’s an eye-popping number.

To put it in perspective, no Calipari team has ever had an assist-to-made-basket ratio of better than 55.1 percent. Five of his UK teams have been below the 50-percent threshold. And no Division I college basketball team has had a higher mark than the Cats’ number in Canada since Sam Houston State managed assists on 74.2 percent of its made baskets during the 2009-10 season. (No college team has topped 20 assists per game since UCLA in 2016-17.)

It was pointed out to Calipari after one of the GLOBL JAM games that his players, particularly the younger guards, seemed to know when to make the extra pass to lead to a better shot.

“They do,” he agreed. “And that’s because they like each other. They’re playing for each other. They know, when you’re playing in this event — this ain’t like a pickup game — you better play together, or you’re gonna get beat. And they’re playing together.”

Kentucky’s ‘basketball players’

Calipari said some variation of the following close to a dozen times over the course of the week in Canada: “We have really good basketball players. They’re basketball players.”

Well, duh, you might say. Of course they’re basketball players. They’re playing basketball, after all. But Calipari’s comments on the subject implied that some of his key contributors on recent teams perhaps didn’t have the basketball skill or acumen that this bunch has. He said multiple times that his current guys weren’t wrestlers, decathletes or track stars, but basketball players.

Calipari didn’t name names, but the only logical way to absorb that is to conclude that he saw other recent Kentucky players as relying more on strength, athleticism, speed and quickness than a grand knowledge of the game or the skill and feel necessary to play it at a high level.

The product on the court sure was impressive. Possession after possession saw different UK players bringing the ball up the court and getting the offense started in a timely manner. Over and over again, these Cats — together for only about two weeks, don’t forget — made the extra pass and kept the ball moving, passing up good looks to set up potentially great ones.

It would be easy to dismiss some of that by referencing those FIBA rules and that 24-second shot clock, which left little time for dilly-dallying and necessitated that Kentucky’s players get into their stuff from the get-go. It’s a fair point, but — once it was clear the Cats were playing that way — these young players actually had to execute. And they did. What’s more, Kentucky’s players, to a man, had talked in the week preceding the Canada trip about how capable and unselfish this bunch had been since they’d arrived on campus for summer practices.

“Everybody on the team is a pretty good playmaker, so whoever gets the ball can push it and just run and make plays,” Wagner said a few days before the trip.

That’s also easy to dismiss as youthful posturing, until you actually see it in action.

“We all have a really, really good time playing with each other,” Sheppard said. “And I think that we’re figuring out that we’re better when we move the ball, instead of one person come down and try to create for their self. … I think we’re figuring each other out and knowing how each other plays, and that’s the way we need to play to be a good team.”

Sheppard led the Cats with 23 assists in Canada, despite playing just the sixth-most minutes on the team. Wagner was next with 19 assists, his playmaking ability already well established. Mitchell, who played most of his minutes as the fill-in center, was next with 18 assists, earning Calipari’s praise for stretching the defense and doing whatever was necessary at any given time.

Dillingham had 14 assists in 68 minutes. Thiero had 12 assists (and just two turnovers).

“Adou played point guard in high school,” Calipari reminded everyone. “But he was 6-2, 6-1. Then he grew to 6-5. And now he’s 6-7.”

Scary stuff.

“And we’re playing dribble drive, which means you’re beating people,” Calipari said. “And just reading and hitting the open man. I mean, if you watch it, it’s fun to watch. And you’re giving them space. And you’re letting them, ‘Do your thing. I’m lettin’ you go. Just don’t be selfish.’ If a guy has the green light … do not take bad, contested shots.”

For the most part, these Cats didn’t.

After their gold medal victory over Canada, their coach brought a special guest into the postgame locker room: Shai Gilgeous-Alexander, the former UK point guard who Calipari often lauds for his own unselfishness and a player who was recently named an All-NBA first-team selection for the first time.

“I love the way you guys play basketball,” Gilgeous-Alexander told the Cats. “You guys move it. You play for each other. You guys can all pass, shoot and dribble. That’s gonna take you guys a long way. That’s where the league is going — I’m sure you guys know that. And just keep being selfless. Keep working hard. …

“You guys are talented. And if you guys stick together, you guys will be very good, for sure.”

What Calipari’s excited about

Good as Kentucky looked moving the ball in Canada, there’s still plenty to work on.

Calipari said he’ll keep stressing the importance of getting into the offense as soon as possible for this team, perhaps a sign the Cats will continue to play a quicker style of basketball once the real season begins.

“Get rid of the ball,” Calipari said he’s telling the freshman guards. “You can’t come up and bounce it 12 times and think we can start offense. Just throw it to anybody. Just get it moving.”

Dillingham might have the biggest adjustment in that area. He’s the smallest — listed at 6-2 and 160 pounds — of the bunch, and much of his previous game has been predicated on breaking down defenders with dribble moves before finding his shots. He’s acknowledged as much, but he’s also loving the way this young backcourt meshed during early practices.

“I feel like it’s gonna fit perfect,” Dillingham told the Herald-Leader. “Because not everyone is one position. Not everyone can do just one thing. And we can all interchange. It doesn’t matter who’s on the ball. We’ve all played the ‘1’ and the ‘2.’ We can all play different roles. So even if we play three guards, I think everyone’s going to be able to play basketball.”

Some of this style will change when injured big men Aaron Bradshaw and Ugonna Onyenso return to the court, with at least one of those players likely to be on the floor more often than not when the Cats’ season begins. But Calipari also bunched Bradshaw — a highly skilled 7-footer — into his “basketball player” descriptor and has constantly praised Onyenso’s ability to soak up knowledge of the game in a short amount of time.

Having Mitchell in that do-everything role certainly helps. Calipari teased a “five-out” offense for Kentucky’s future, and the recent transfer displayed an ability in Canada to make quick passes that led to buckets, along with those “hockey assists” — the pass that leads to the pass that leads to points — that Calipari covets.

Playmakers like Edwards and Thiero playing the “3” and/or “4” roles will help, too.

“So you’ve got five guys at all times on the floor that can pass and shoot and drive and make decisions,” Calipari said. “It’s my old way of playing, which is give them space, and space the court and fly. … But you’ve gotta have a bunch of guys that can play basketball.”

If it’s not clear yet, Calipari thinks he has just that with this team. After the GLOBL JAM was finished — UK sweeping all four games — he returned to his “four point guard” vision, listing off several Kentucky players and energetically making the noise for quickly passing a basketball — “Pssssh! Pssssh! Pssssh!” — to put an exclamation point on his outlook for the season.

These Wildcats won’t tally 25 assists per game, surely, but, from what has been said and shown so far, they do have the look of an unselfish bunch, one that could be a lot of fun to watch — inevitable growing pains and all — come November.

Their 64-year-old coach seems to already be having a ball.

“What I’m excited about — as you can tell — we’ve got good basketball players,” Calipari said. “They’re skilled. You know we’re playing basketball. I’m not having to invent shots every time down the court. Hard to coach that way. I’m telling them from when we started here: ‘You guys do more, so I can do less.’ Those are my best teams. ‘You guys do more. Talk more. Call more. Call what you want to run. I don’t care.’ Just do it together.”

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Kentucky shot 117 threes in Canada. Will these Wildcats let it fly when the season starts?

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A quiet trip to Canada, but a loud game. Rob Dillingham ‘gonna be fine’ for Kentucky.

Ugonna Onyenso out for a ‘couple of months’ due to injury on Kentucky basketball trip

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