Don’t expect to see Willie Cauley-Stein, Kentucky’s 7-foot defensive specialist, in action this weekend at the Final Four.
Kentucky coach John Calipari said Cauley-Stein, his valuable sixth man, is unlikely to play this weekend against Wisconsin or in the championship on Monday if the Wildcats get there. He suffered a left ankle injury in Kentucky’s Midwest Region semifinal win over defending national champion Louisville Friday night in Indianapolis and missed the regional final against Michigan on Sunday.
“I doubt he plays,” the coach said. “He will be on our bench cheering like crazy.”
Cauley-Stein averaged 6.8 points, 6.1 rebounds and 2.9 blocks per game this season. Freshman forward Marcus Lee, one of Kentucky’s six McDonald’s All-Americans, received a lot of Cauley-Stein’s minutes against Michigan and came up big, scoring 10 points and adding eight rebounds. Kentucky, however, will miss the impact made by Cauley-Stein, who Calipari said “changed most games for us.”
Calipari said the biggest problem for Kentucky during its underwhelming regular season is obvious now: the head coach.
“The bottom line is I screwed this up in a couple of different ways,” he said. “I waited probably two months longer than I should have to put the couple things in that changed how we were as a team.”
UConn coach Kevin Ollie would like to see more African-American coaches in power conferences, and feels the number should be higher. He was one of two African-American coaches in the Sweet 16, along with Stanford’s Johnny Dawkins.
“It’s definitely a concern,” he said. “I just admire [former Georgetown coach] John Thompson, [former Arkansas coach] Nolan Richardson. They paved the way for me that I can have a job and do it successfully. But it’s definitely something we need to take a long look at and hopefully we can get more African Americans in these jobs, in these positions, that they can run a program.
“I feel it’s my duty to continue to be a role model, to continue to do the things I do, really handle myself as a great person, so a young African American that’s 8 or 9 years old can aspire to be a head coach one day.”
Wisconsin coach Bo Ryan doesn’t use a coaching board to diagram plays during games. His explanation is simple: The players have enough to worry about, and he uses practice to diagram plays.
“Have you ever watched a huddle, where the players’ eyes are the whole time the coach is making 15 lines?” he said. “You look at that thing and you swear it was your 4-year-old granddaughter who just made a drawing for you. Coaches get a little excited with that marker. … I want my players relaxed at that time. Their eyes on us. There’s not any other distractions.”