John Calipari explains his mystery tweak

By the time the University of Kentucky's basketball team had arrived in Texas for the Final Four, coach John Calipari's mystery tweak had lost some of its mystique.

Point guard Andrew Harrison was passing more and shooting less during the Wildcats' postseason run, evidenced by his eight assists against LSU and nine versus Georgia in the SEC tournament.

Calipari confirmed Monday on "CBS This Morning," during an appearance to promote his new book due out Tuesday, what changes he made to Harrison's game.

"I was trying to make the game easier for Andrew," Calipari said. "I got tapes of Deron Williams, who averaged nine assists throughout his career in the NBA. We had a game where he had 11 assists and I showed Andrew. I said look at this. Let's watch. Would you have passed or shot? He said, 'I would have shot.'

"…Well, Deron was throwing balls to everybody. And so I said Monday, you will not shoot one basketball. You will pass. We're going to run less plays. You will create shots. We will chart. We're not telling our team."

That day, Harrison had 21 assists.

"I'm mad that whole practice because it's changed my team," Calipari said. "Why didn't I do it earlier? I apologized to (Harrison) and I apologized to the team. I said, 'I screwed this up. Make me look good now.'"

In the national championship game, Harrison scored eight points on 3 of 9 shooting and tallied nine assists. Still, Calipari said the Wildcats came up short in their backcourt.

"Connecticut's guard play was so good and they were so active that it affected us, but I have all freshmen," Calipari said. "I tried to minimize the game for them — 'It's not that big of a game' — well, it was."

• Calipari's book — "Players First: Coaching from the Inside Out" — touches on a number of subjects regarding player development. And of course, he's fighting for the individuals.

He compared the NCAA's governance to the old Soviet Union in the book, something he said Monday was "probably not the best way of putting it." He'd like to see reform nonetheless, such as paying for total cost of attendance.

• Asked what's more important, a good recruiter or good coach, Calipari said: "You'd better have both, because the only way that you can be a great recruiter is if there are results — players are getting better."

• Given Calipari's success at UK of sending prospects to the NBA, he's now fighting a stigma with current and future players.

"Here's the issue we have right now," he said. "Young people in college basketball — our young players — think that if they stay more than one year, they've failed. Where did that come from? This one and done — the connotation is so bad — we came up with succeed and proceed," meaning players can make the next step at their own pace.

Jonathan Lintner can be reached at (502) 582-4199; follow him on Twitter @JonathanLintner.