It was a shame John
Calipari had to leave so early. It wasn’t just his team’s 89-62 thrashing of
host South Carolina at Colonial Life Arena in a key Southeastern Conference
matchup that the Kentucky coach missed seeing first hand. He missed the Cats’
best performance of the entire season. “Definitely,” said point guard Tyler
Ulis. But if you thought the Cats were playing without a coach after a volcanic
eruption earned Calipari two technical fouls and an ejection less than three
minutes into Saturday’s showdown, you were greatly mistaken.
And if you assumed
Calipari’s presence left the building when the UK coach made the long walk to
the visiting locker room, you’d be zero-for-two. “The story is Coach Cal
coached the game through Tyler Ulis,” UK assistant Kenny Payne said. Or simply:
Saturday’s story was Tyler Ulis. For quite some time now, Calipari has been
talking about how his sophomore point guard was a coach on the floor, how Ulis
makes suggestions, recommends plays, knows how to get his teammates in the
right place at the right time.
Never was that in more
evidence than Saturday when Ulis scored 27 points, dished 12 assists, made two
steals and, according to Payne, ran the Kentucky offense by himself after
Calipari was told to hit the showers. “I never touched the offense,” said Payne,
who took over lead bench duties in Cal’s absence. “Didn’t have to.” The offense
was Ulis’ baby and you would have thought the Chicago native was John Wooden.
Kentucky shot 48.4 percent, made 11 of 25 three-pointers, held its own on the
boards with the bruising Gamecocks, dished 17 assists compared to just 12
turnovers.
And if Ulis was already
the definition of a complete point guard — a floor general who can also score —
he was even more so without Calipari. “I had to,” Ulis said afterward. “The
coaching staff gave me the green light to call what I wanted to call. I just
tried to get guys in sets and lead the win.” How important is that? “I can’t
begin to tell you how important that is for any coach, but especially for this
team,” Payne said. “He guides the other four guys on the floor with him and
makes their game easier.”
We could use the rest
of this column to tell you about Ulis’ pinpoint lobs for Marcus Lee’s dunks; or
Ulis’ 4-of-8 shooting from three-point range; or how he found Isaiah Briscoe on
a cut to the basket for a bucket — Briscoe was about to burst as he headed back
up the floor, pointing at Ulis with a huge smile — or how he helped set up
Jamal Murray on the way to the freshman’s 26 points. If you are a fan of
Kentucky basketball, or just college basketball, you’ve seen all that before,
enough to convince you this kid should be in the conversation for National
Player of the Year. So we’re going to let the other team talk about Tyler Ulis.
“I was really impressed, really impressed,” said South Carolina forward Michael
Carrera, who led the Gamecocks with 25 points. “When he was a freshman, he was
the quiet one. Wow, it’s unbelievable how he has grown and become a great
leader for that team.” “It’s his team now,” South Carolina Coach Frank Martin
said. “That’s happened over the course of the year. I don’t think I’ve ever
coached against somebody that’s so slight — and I don’t say that in a negative
way — in appearance and yet so strong, so durable, so competitive and so good
as Tyler Ulis.
He never comes out of
games. He guards the heck out of your point guard. He makes every competitive
play. If you ball-screen him, you’re not going to ball-screen him, he’s getting
through it. You try to put him in off-the-ball screens, he just knocks your screeners
out of the way and gets to where he belongs. “And then offensively, he never
shut up. There’s two minutes left in the game and they’re up 56 or whatever
they were up and he’s still telling guys what to do. That’s a point guard.
That’s why they did to us what they did today.” On this day anyway, Kentucky
didn’t need John Calipari.
