On Sunday, the Kentucky Wildcats rolled over the Puerto Rico national team reserves 74-49. Then on Monday, the Cats used a strong second half to down Champagne Chalons-Reims Basket, a professional team out of France led by a handful of former NBA players, by a final tally of 81-58.
While it is difficult to judge the level of talent exhibited by either Wildcat foe, compared to top NCAA teams, fans of Kentucky are giddy with excitement about their new brand of Cats.
"At the end of the day these kids did it and it had nothing to do with coaching," said Kentucky assistant Kenny Payne, who coached the game on Monday. "We have a whole bunch of very talented young men who play great together and love each other and they're learning about each other. It makes our job a lot easier."
Wildcats head coach John Calipari is using the exhibition in Nassau to meld together a core group of returnees that played for the national title in April with a new batch of recruits that is being hyped as one of his best classes ever. Such praise is not easily given in light of the recent lottery picks who have donned UK uniforms over the last half decade, including Anthony Davis, Michael Kidd-Gilcrest, and Nerlens Noel.
Coach Cal is certainly high on his players, both young and old, and impressed with the early returns.
"Everybody touched the ball and had opportunities to do things," Coach Cal said. "Loved our ball pressure. Loved the fact that we're passing the ball to each other and making extra passes. Aggressive. Our ball pressure was great and we were pushing the ball and attacking. The things that we worked on we did.”
Over the first two games, Junior forward Alex Poythress has been dominant in the paint while Sophomore guard Aaron Harrison has pleased Calipari with his steady play and leadership on the floor.
“You saw him pressuring the ball today, going up and playing,” Calipari said of Harrison. “You saw him in pick and rolls. You saw him rebounding the ball. You saw him fighting in there. That's when you have a presence.”
But it was Poythress, a rare Junior star in the Kentucky program, who really caught the eye of his coach.
"He was terrific," Calipari said after the Puerto Rico victory, in which Poythress charted a double-double in just 23 minutes of court time. "That's as good as he's played. And again, you have to understand those are older professional players (he went against). He just does things the normal players can't do. To be honest, the stuff he does, I can't teach. I wish I could, but I can't."
Throughout the first two games, Kentucky’s scoring leader was 6-11 Freshman Karl-Anthony Towns, who put in 19 points and grabbed 10 boards against the much more mature Champagne Chalons-Reims Basket team on Monday.
After roaming the perimeter and failing to mix things up inside against Puerto Rico, Towns took his coaches’ words to heart and made his presence felt in the paint on Monday.
"In order for him to be the best player in the country, in order for him to be a professional, in order for him to dominate college basketball, it has to start from the inside-out," Payne said of Towns.
Calipari routinely platooned 10-12 players over the first two games in an effort to build depth and determine potential rotations and combinations. The preliminary results have been positive even as the reserve unit spurred a second half run on Monday against Champagne that turned a 5 point halftime lead into a 29 point bulge.
Champagne forward Da'Sean Butler, a former college and NBA player, thinks the Wildcats depth will lead them to a national championship next season.
They're a really big team," said Butler. "I heard (Jay) Bilas had them picked to win (the national title). I might have to jump on the bandwagon. They're a really good team, man."
It bears noting that the new Wildcats are still developing, and chemistry will continue to be an issue (not necessarily a bad one) as the team plays four more games in its Bahamas exhibition tour. But the early indications are that Kentucky, who is playing without key players Willie Cauley-Stein and Trey Lyles, who are both injured, will be a dominant force in college basketball this winter.