Fraschilla calls 2012-13 a ‘transition year’ for Kentucky

Calling this a “transition year” for Kentucky, ESPN analyst Fran Fraschilla saw “Camp Cal” as a sign of Coach John Calipari’s relentess effort to make the most of the 2012-13 season.
“John will push and prod this team till the last second of the last game of the season,” Fraschilla said. “Then everybody in the Commonwealth will be excited about what’s coming next year.”
Next season already bursts with expectations given a much-ballyhooed class of freshmen set to arrive next fall: the Harrison twins, James Young, Marcus Lee and Derek Willis. Upon similar foundations the last three seasons, Calipari re-introduced the dominance that had been synonymous with the program.
This season?
Questions about experience, depth and point guard play contribute to UK’s 5-3 won-loss record so far, Fraschilla said.
After attributing a middling second half against Samford Tuesday to poor conditioning, Calipari announced an upcoming three-week period devoted to fitness. This time period, which Calipari dubbed “Camp Cal,” got a different label from Fraschilla.
“Crisis management,” he called it. “. . . It’s the perfect time for Cal to teach some of these young players that they don’t know what they don’t know.”
Fraschilla divided all players into three categories: Those who know how to approach basketball, those who don’t and those who don’t know that they don’t know.
“You can coach the second kind,” he said.
In that context, Camp Cal is a re-education camp designed to make the UK players more aware of what it will take to be successful.