Despite defensive hiccups, Calipari says Dontaie Allen “deserves to be on this pitch”



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Just looking at the box’s score, one would assume that Dontaie Allen had an outstanding second consecutive performance for Kentucky, and that assumption would be correct. Finishing with 14 points on 4-10 shots, 2-5 from three and 4-4 from the line to go with five rebounds and a block in 32 minutes, there was a lot of good that came with the freshman’s game. of red shirt.

But not everything has been positive, especially on the defensive side of the pitch. And Britain’s head coach John Calipari has noticed.

“Dontaie collapsed a ton defensively,” Calipari said. “He did baskets and free throws when we needed them, but he maybe gave up as many baskets as he scored.

The point is, his attack is too valuable to take off.

“I said, ‘Look, if it does and it doesn’t matter, I’m probably fine with you. But (he) has to get to where… that was game planning stuff. He went under a screen, they did stuff, ”Calipari said. “But, I’m telling you, he deserves to be on this court. You know what he does to defense, he spreads out defense. I ran a coin for him, I hit a three. To the top, boom. It may have timed out. “

Luckily for the Wildcats, Calipari believes that Allen’s defensive mistakes can and will be corrected, giving some examples of in-game situations.

“No, no, no (they won’t be hard to fix),” Calipari said. “And he bounced the ball, had some rebounds. I’m going to give you an example. If your man was scouted and didn’t have the ball, we’ll go after him. He walked in and his man rolled a three. If your man gets a dribble transfer, we weren’t going over that, we were going under that. He went further. If your man was crossing the lane to the weak side, you had to stop both feet in the lane on the other side of the basket where you started off. He got out of the way twice and wasn’t ready to change for a guy he needed to change to because he wasn’t where he was supposed to be. We stayed there for two days. But he is not the only one. Isaiah did it, Davion did it several times.

Currently, the total number of outages is between seven and nine. If it manages to reduce that number to a handful, the UK is in good shape.

“He’s had blackouts,” Calipari said. “You know what? As I said to him afterwards, ‘You had seven or eight breakdowns, nine (maybe)? Let’s go four, then let’s keep taking pictures. Just keep taking pictures, kid. Look, sometimes you’re going to give up on something, and he’s trying, he’s got courage.

“What he does for us, we cannot replace. I just have to figure out how to improve it in defense or make it more comfortable.

Senior center Olivier Sarr added that Allen is “changing the game” for Kentucky on the offensive end of the field.

“Obviously he’s a knockdown shooter, he showed it the last game and this game again,” Sarr said. “It makes the defense worried about him. It’s self-explanatory. He opens the yard to everyone. It changes the game, it makes it easier for us to use and play our game, to access the game. It opens up the court a lot.

There are still some defensive mistakes to work out, but this team is at its best when Allen shoots the ball and shoots down shots.

“Dontaie wants to do what’s best for the team, and the best for us is that he’s shooting three,” said Sarr. “It opens up for us. He still has to find a way to pull off those lines because he’s such a great shooter.

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