NEW YORK — Larry Brown says his friend John Calipari will eventually have to trim his rotation and abandon hopes of playing 10-12 players this season.
“I know Cal, he’s going to want to win a national championship. He’s going to have to get down to eight or nine and he will,” the SMU coach and Naismith Hall of Famer said Wednesday at American media day at the New York Athletic Club.
Calipari, whose team features nine McDonald’s All-Americans, is experimenting with a platoon system in which he plays 10-12 guys, giving them all exposure to NBA scouts.
“He can do that early in games that they know they’re going to win,” Brown said. “But competition never hurts. I platooned when I was a young coach in the pros.”
Brown believes Calipari will ultimately do what it takes to win — and that could mean several players, including a McDonald’s All-American or two, isn’t playing as much as he would like.
“He’s a great coach,” Brown said of Cal. “He’s always had the ability to figure out what his team needs to do to be competitive. This a great way to earn the right to play. I talk to him all the time. ‘You know you got five against five, whoever wins, keep track of it every day.’
“And he tells me his practices are going to better than most games, I think he’s probably right.”
Brown added: “When you’re a bad team in the pros, you’re in the lottery. When you’re a great team in college, you get multiple lottery picks. So Cal’s got multiple lottery picks and he’s gotta figure it out.”
Photo: CHUCK BURTON — ASSOCIATED PRESS
