The Kentucky Wildcats entered the Final Four undefeated largely because of coach John Calipari's masterful management of a wealthily talented roster, an approach that may be setting his team back.
Calipari released a blog post on his website Tuesday titled: "We may never platoon again, but players will always come first."
His platoon system consisted of two five-man squads, ESPN noted, and they would change out for each other to keep Kentucky's players fresh and guarantee playing time. With an uncommon amount of sophomores and juniors on Calipari's team, the coach seemingly had the perfect solution to manage such a wealth of talented players.
"It was a terrific run. I'm disappointed we didn't win two more games because I really believed we were going to," Calipari wrote. "It never entered my mind that we would lose, even late in the Wisconsin game or the Notre Dame game."
Even by not reaching the championship game, Kentucky's 38-1 season and Calipari's platoon system were a massive success. But now it may be costing Kentucky ammunition for another Tournament run.
Seven Wildcats are entering the NBA Draft and more than one could realistically be selected early on. However, Calipari is not exactly re-tooling. As Yahoo Sports noted, Kentucky lost out on several top high school recruits such as Malik Newman, Brandon Ingram, Jaylen Brown, Stephen Zimmerman and Cheick Diallo.
Calipari's recruiting class may not be all doom-and-gloom and he is returning Tyler Ullis, Alex Poythress and Marcus Lee. Yahoo Sports suggested Calipari should have made his announcement to ditch the platoon system a month earlier, before some of the aforementioned players committed elsewhere.
The underlying reason for nixing the platoon system is Calipari will not have the roster for it next season.
"As it has always been in my career, I played the best players the most each game, and the best scorers shot the most. That has been my history, even with the platoon. This season, Aaron, Devin and Andrew were our leading shot takers, and as Karl improved, he moved into that group," Calipari wrote. "Normally, we will average five guys in double figures, whether I'm playing five, six or seven. We will have four or five guys score 25 or more points in a game every year because if you have it going, we're going to let you go. Those things didn't change this past year, nor will they in the future."
