Sullivan | UK's platoon plan wears down foes

LEXINGTON, Ky. – Kentucky basketball is not a marathon, but a sprint. More specifically, it is a relay race in which the Wildcats keep passing the baton to rested runners while their opposition plods along on the edge of exhaustion.

That's the formula to which John Calipari is committed, college hoops with tag-team tactics. Despite a five-point halftime deficit against Buffalo Sunday afternoon, and an aide's suggestion that he abandon two-platoon basketball in favor of a more static lineup, Calipari clung to his substitution pattern to achieve the full effect of rotating fresh legs.

The final score was Kentucky 71, Buffalo 52. The lesson was that attrition takes time.

"Every time we subbed, it was like, we'd have a new five coming in, and it just wore them down. . ." freshman guard Tyler Ulis said. "The first group wears them down, and then we come in fresh and the (starters) come back in fresh. They're out there playing against two teams, and we just have to keep the pressure on them."

With nine McDonald's All-Americans on his roster, Calipari has the luxury of extraordinary depth and the burden of trying to persuade elite players that the greater good means fewer minutes and a more sporadic spotlight. Sunday, Calipari's second unit outscored the starters, 45-26, and it opened the second half with a 9-0 run that raised the volume at Rupp Arena to mid-season noise levels.

For Big Blue Nation, the message was to withhold panic until the opponent can be posted-up by fatigue. For the visitors from Lake Erie, UK's human waves must have felt as inexorable as Niagara Falls.

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"Unfortunately, there are two halves and the second one was a little tougher for us, particularly on the offensive end," said Buffalo coach Bobby Hurley, who was introduced to resounding boos from spectators who remembered him as an accomplice to Christian Laettner at Duke. "It seemed like our shots in the second half were a lot more contested and a lot more difficult to find."

No coincidence there. As the game progressed, Calipari adjusted his defensive pressure to deemphasize trapping and to create more claustrophobia; "to get into their legs a little bit and tire them out and get into their ability to make jump shots." After sinking four of its first seven three-point shots, Buffalo was 0-for-5 behind the arc in the second half, and the Bulls would make only four of their last 19 field-goal attempts.

Though Buffalo's Justin Moss suggested Kentucky's advantage of fresh legs was offset by its difficulty in establishing rhythm — "For me, personally, I wouldn't like that," he said — the 6-7 forward missed all six of his second-half shots. Buffalo's cumulative wear was also apparent in its offensive rebounding. The Bulls retrieved just three of their 15 missed shots in the second half.

"Definitely, in the second half you could see guys might get a little tired, a little winded," UK freshman Trey Lyles said. "But we just keep coming."

Buffalo would hold its last lead in the seventh minute of the second half, at 45-44, but the Bulls went only eight deep and appeared depleted. Hurley tried to compensate defensively by resorting to a 2-3 zone, but that couldn't solve Kentucky's size or its renewable energies. Buffalo was able to make only two shots from the field during the game's last 14 minutes, the latter a loosely contested layup with four seconds remaining.

What Duke coach Mike Krzyzewski once described as Louisville's "boom" effect has been reprised by a rival with enough players to make it a sonic boom.

"Defensively, their athleticism, the ability of their bigger players to play great defense away from the basket, it was kind of overwhelming at times," Hurley said.

It takes time. But it also takes its toll.

Tim Sullivan can be reached at (502) 582-4650, by email at tsullivan@courier-journal.com, and on Twitter @TimSullivan714