The Tigers spent more time to start practice today working on free throws than I’ve ever seen them. John Calipari set up this 10-minute game where one player could challenge another in a free throw contest, and it was kind of like a tournament. It also involved “handicaps,” like in golf. I wasn’t totally clear on how it worked, but it was interesting to watch. Somehow, at the end, Joey Dorsey was the “winner” of the thing. I didn’t exactly understand what was going on, but the fact that Joey won is either a really good thing for him or a really bad thing for everybody else. Either way, we’ll see how it affects the free-throw shooting going forward.

The coaching staff was really happy with the practice Monday. Cal talked about going back to the kind of practices the team had in the preseason, and his latest theme is starting the season over today. It’s a clever approach. The Tigers have broken pretty much every school or Conference USA record as far as wins, streaks, etc. My colleague Jim Masilak and I were talking about this last week, in fact. It seems like every game, another record gets broken, and you kind of have record fatigue with this team. They all kind of run together. Now that all the records are out of the way, this team has six weeks to focus on getting prepared for the NCAA Tournament.