I know only time will tell if this mystery "tweak" is a legit gimmick or just a Cal-Aid gimmick, but this sounds like an Onion article:


Calipari's mystery 'tweak' has Kentucky basketball swagger back



Mar. 12, 2014

http://www.courier-journal.com/article/2...agger-back


LEXINGTON, KY. — John Calipari apologized to his University of Kentucky basketball team Monday. He should’ve seen it sooner, he told them. But better late than never, so Calipari made a mystery “tweak” that he claims “changed everything” and has buoyed the players’ sagging confidence heading into this week’s SEC Tournament.

“If he’s wrong about something, he’s going to say he’s wrong, and then he’s going to fix it,” center Willie Cauley-Stein said of his coach. “That’s just being a man. And when you get to that point, where you know you’re wrong and you can admit it, that’s powerful. You get a rally from your team after that.”

That’s what Calipari, whose team lost three of four games to close the regular season, is counting on.

The tweak came, coincidentally, on the same day the Wildcats (22-9) became the first team in 34 years to plummet from preseason No. 1 to out of The Associated Press Top 25. So what exactly is this magical elixir that might have arrived just in time to save a disappointing season?

“You’re not getting it from me,” star forward Julius Randle repeated four times Tuesday, grinning each time.

“You’ve just got to wait until Friday to see it,” guard James Young said. “I think we’re just going to be playing a lot better.”

Piecing together vague answers from the Cats, it seems the tweak was twofold: Calipari made practice far more physical l — pummeling players with pads and drilling them to attack more aggressively on both offense and defense — and tinkered with the offense somehow to improve ball movement.

“You’ll see a different team when you watch Friday. If you know anything about basketball, you’ll know exactly what I did,” Calipari said. “I’m just disappointed in me that I didn’t do it earlier. Why didn’t I catch this and why wasn’t I thinking in those terms?”

Calipari attempted to answer his own question, saying he was distracted by all the other fires he had to put out over the course of the season as he worked to improve individual performances and also blend a bunch of freshmen and sophomores — most of them McDonald’s All Americans — into a cohesive unit.

“There were a lot of things,” he said, including a bum hip that needs to be replaced after the season. Calipari joked: “I think it was the drugs I was taking for a while that got me where I wasn’t thinking right. But normally I would catch it and try something earlier.”

That’s why Calipari apologized to the team Monday, “because it was very clear when you saw it.” Calipari compared the Tweak That Shall Not Be Named to a “Eureka!” moment for a business owner who has seen sales or production decline and tries and fails more than once to fix it.

“You can’t put your finger on it,” he said, “and then something happens and you look and you say, ‘That was it!’ I was just sitting at home on Sunday and it just popped in my mind and I just said, ‘You know what? Let’s do it. Let’s do this.’ ”

Calipari said in Monday’s practice he emphasized defenders playing with hands up and banging with their bodies any opponents who attempt to drive or post up — and conversely, on offense, for the Cats to play through that kind of contact. He’d coached his team all season to think “hands off, you can’t touch anybody” because of the new officiating emphasis.

As the season has worn on, Calipari sees that emphasis decreasing.

“So basically we’re back to where we were a year ago when everybody said, ‘You foul on every possession to win.’ So we just had to practice that way,” Calipari said.

Cauley-Stein said the team went back and looked at clips of previous opponents and “you can just see everybody else bodying us … and you wonder why we weren’t doing that the whole time.” But now that’s the plan, and the players seem to like it.

“We’re a big, strong, athletic team,” said Randle, who is 6 feet 9, 250 pounds. “Being physical is kind of part of our game. Taking away from our physicality kind of takes away from our aggression. I think it will be a return to that.”

“It felt normal, felt like we were back in our groove,” Cauley-Stein said. “We kind of had that feel, almost like that swagger was coming back to our team.”

That remains to be seen Friday, when the Wildcats face either LSU or Alabama in the SEC quarterfinals.

“All I can tell you is there was a different feel in the building. It was not just the tweaking of what we did. It was the physical play brought something out of them that I wanted to see,” Calipari said.

More, lol.


Kentucky fans will find out soon if John Calipari's tweak will take



Mar. 12, 2014

http://www.courier-journal.com/article/2...-will-take

Kentucky basketball coach John Calipari said this week that he made a mystery “tweak” that has fixed whatever ailed the UK basketball team.

He says hip hoopsters will recognize what is different straight away on Friday when the Cats take the court in the SEC tournament. Basketball boneheads will have to find out via Twitter or Facebook, he said.

Whether this is a case of Cal’s new clothes or a true basketball bolt from the blue, the college basketball world is abuzz with what the tweak could be.

Calipari probably did one of the following:

• Encouraged Julius Randle to go into “Beast Mode.”

• Explained to the Harrison twins that it’s OK to pass to open teammates.

• Realized he forgot to explain the dribble-drive offense to this team.

• Decided he is done with one-and-dones and will start a lineup of homegrown players Jarrod Polson, Jon Hood, Dominique Hawkins, Derek Willis and Tod Lanter.

• Brought Nerlens Noel back for the postseason on a rehab assignment from the NBA.

• Arranged to communicate with players exclusively via social media during timeouts.

• Forgot to tell players they need to give “110 percent.”

• Agreed with the team not to shave till the Cats lose a game.

• Did he say tweak? He meant “twerk!” Miley Cyrus hired as motivational speaker.

Here is hoping it takes. Otherwise this team could be forever known as The Untweakables.

^^^

Maybe his "tweak" is that he finally realized he needed to COACH and not just sell snake oil.

The NBA job must have fallen through.

Cal a tweaker?


Guess that goes with the territory...

Please tell me they are not going to twerk, especially Cal with that hip. He is a master motivator but the Emperors lost his clothes.

He has them wrapped around his finger.

Calipari is losing it, uh lost it, I hope.

Reminds me of a story about Charles Spurgeon, who was a great preacher about a century ago. He had a student at his college that was preaching a sermon about the armor of God. He put on the armor piece by piece in his very effective sermon then asked "Now, where is the devil?" Spurgeon who was sitting in the back yelled out "He's inside the armor".

Cal can tweak and gimmick all that he wants but the problems inside the armor (Harrison twins) aren't going away.

My momma always told me," If you can't say something nice about someone, then you shouldn't say anything at all".........................................................................................................................................................................................................................awkward silence.

For all those knuckleheads that insist I am "mean" to Josh:

http://csnbbs.com/thread-335433.html

What was Cal's deal last night--

I really can't understand his substitution tendencies sometimes. This is a young team that lacks cohesiveness, but it is difficult to become cohesive when the same five aren't on the floor for ANY extended period of time.

Cal was out of control last nite. I would bet that there was not a group of the same five players on the court for four consecutive minutes in the entire game.

Cal's first sub was at 17:55 in the game, and the second sub was 30 seconds later. Sallie played a 50 second stint once.

His coaching method currently reminds me of the way he was coaching the 04-05 team early in that season. A lot of yelling and quick subs. That team fared poorly, losing to Ol' Miss, La Tech, Providence..among others.

I really hope he lets these kids work out their kinks on the court because I really can't see this team improving if Memphis doesn't get some continuity.

Sounds like nothing more then coach speak.

Just roll the ball out there.

Is a tweak like a course correction?

Black jerseys?

Those bullet points on the second story are hilarious

Must be nice for his boss to hear. Basically he blames his hip issues on the fact that he really didn't do his job. How would any of you like to pay someone X million for a year of work, and when its time to show results, they tell you they finally realized that their hip issues have made them forget how to really do their job

Snake oil salesman extraordinaire. There is a sucker born every minute, and today there are a bunch of them in Kentucky.

The big tweak was that the SEC tourney bracket came out and Coach Cal realized that he didn't have to play a ranked / tournament team until the finals against Florida. He should roll to the final game, and then there is no pressure or shame because he will be playing the #1 team in the country. Win or lose that game, he will still have Kentucky fans believing that he figured out and corrected what was wrong with his team.

(03-14-2014 01:24 AM)Trapper John Wrote:  The big tweak was that the SEC tourney bracket came out and Coach Cal realized that he didn't have to play a ranked / tournament team until the finals against Florida. He should roll to the final game, and then there is no pressure or shame because he will be playing the #1 team in the country. Win or lose that game, he will still have Kentucky fans believing that he figured out and corrected what was wrong with his team.