Calipari runs a well-oiled Kentucky machine

• John Calipari's plan is simple: get top recruits, win, and send those players to the NBA
• He excels at getting elite players to play together, defend and share the ball each year
• This year's UK team is lacking in veteran presence, unlike this past season's championship team

LEXINGTON, Ky. -- John Calipari doesn't like to call it a system. It's more like a cycle anyway.

Recruit. Win. Send to NBA.

(Repeat.)

For the third consecutive year, the Kentucky coach essentially is replacing his starting lineup with a cast of likely one-and-done freshmen. They come in as one of the best recruiting classes in the nation -- if not the best -- and Calipari will try to get them to play unselfishly. If they do, they'll almost certainly be in the mix for a national championship.

Then they'll be lottery picks in June's draft, if all goes according to plan.

"He has a proven track record of taking guys and basically making one-year players (into) pros," says Evan Daniels, a national recruiting analyst for Scout.com. "Ultimately, the kids, most of them don't care about the schools they're going to. Their thought process is to fast-track to the NBA. Calipari has proven he can get them there the quickest. That's how it's been the last couple of years.

"There are going to continue to be one-hit wonders and stars in the NBA because he's recruiting the elite of the elite."

Three of Kentucky's freshmen this year -- Nerlens Noel, Alex Poythress and Archie Goodwin -- were ranked as the nation's Nos. 1, 7 and 14 players, respectively, in Scout.com's final Class of 2012 rankings. The fourth member of the Wildcats' freshman class this season? Willie Cauley, a four-star center ranked 15th in the nation at his position.

The new Kentucky freshmen have to replace a prolific Kentucky freshman class. Led by Anthony Davis, the national player of the year and defensive stalwart, the 2011-12 Wildcats won Calipari his first national championship and the program's eighth overall.

Of the team's five starters, four -- Davis, Michael Kidd-Gilchrist, Terrence Jones and Marquis Teague -- were selected in the first round of the NBA draft. Two more -- Doron Lamb and Darius Miller -- were drafted in the second round, tying the record for the most players from one school selected in one draft, set by UNLV in 1977.

At this rate, Kentucky is running out of room to celebrate its pros. Inside the men's basketball offices, there are posters of the five Wildcats drafted in the first round in 2010. There are headshots and lists of former Kentucky players now in the NBA.

There's talk of updating everything, because Davis and Co. aren't represented yet.

This is what Calipari sells. It's not just Kentucky. It's life after Kentucky.

One-and-done rule

Calipari didn't create the one-and-done rule, and he says he doesn't like it. But his name inextricably will be tied to it for the rest of his career.

Since 2005, when the NBA implemented a rule that players must be at least one year removed from high school before entering the draft, Calipari has coached 11 of the 52 players who were drafted after spending one year in college. (Twelve, if you include Enes Kanter, who was ruled ineligible and never played at Kentucky.)

The names themselves are some of the biggest in the sport. At Memphis, where he coached until 2009, Calipari had Derrick Rose and Tyreke Evans. At Kentucky, he has coached John Wall, DeMarcus Cousins and Brandon Knight, in addition to Davis, Kidd-Gilchrist and the rest of the 2012 title team.

That means, on an annual basis, there are always a lot of big shoes to fill.

"We have to sign four to five players a year who are ready to play," Calipari said last month. "You're not just recruiting guys who maybe two or three years this kid will be ready. Now they don't have to be a starter, but they have to be ready to walk in and play. Normally, you recruit a big, good class, then you plug holes for two years, and then you recruit another big class. That's the normal way it's been for 50 years. It's not that way here at Kentucky.

"This is an every-year occurrence and, to be honest, I hope it stays that way."

Calipari says he has advocated for changes to the one-year rule, suggesting making it a two-year minimum or adding incentives for players to stay in school, such as allowing players to take out loans against their future earnings. Something encouraging that he thinks might work best -- not a hard-and-fast rule.

Right now, he says he leaves it up to the players and what they want to do for themselves and their families.

"It's not a system," Calipari says. "It's what I told Tyreke Evans after his 33-point game in the Sweet 16 against Missouri: 'Kid, if you want to do what's right for you and your family, you're going to put your name in the draft.' He was the fourth pick in the draft. Rookie of the year. Not only was he ready to be drafted or be drafted high, he was ready.

"If we do right by players, they will drag us where we're trying to go. It's not the other way around."

Kentucky athletics director Mitch Barnhart says he'd personally like to see the rule be more similar to baseball's -- where players can go pro out of high school or after three years of college.

But he has no problem with Calipari's players-first mentality.

"We'd love to have an Anthony Davis, a Brandon Knight, a John Wall be in our program for two or three years," Barnhart says. "That'd be great. You'd be raising a lot of banners around here. Having said that, it is what it is, and you have to respect those players' needs to take care of things for their families, themselves personally, guard against injuries -- all of those pieces of the puzzle that make those decisions so dramatically difficult."

Other coaches will compliment Calipari for what he does but can't fathom doing it themselves on a yearly basis.

"Because of John and because of Kentucky, they're always going to be in on the top players," Indiana coach Tom Crean says. "That's just the way it is. They can go to the McDonald's (All-American) list and they can recruit that way, and that works for them. There's a lot of different ways to do it, and it works for him, but I'm not sure it would work for everybody."

Says Missouri coach Frank Haith: "It's so hard to get young kids to buy in to lock people up defensively. And they did that. He coaches a young team every year. It is so hard to do. I can't imagine."

On the recruiting trail

Calipari has been active pursuing recruits, already preparing for next fall in the event he'll need essentially a new starting lineup again.

Kentucky is in the mix for the top-ranked player in the class, 6-8 forward Julius Randle from Dallas, and has already landed the Harrison twins (Aaron and Andrew) from Richmond, Texas, both top-five players. The 'Cats are also interested in Andrew Wiggins, a small forward from Toronto who recently reclassified to the class of 2013 and is now the top recruit in the class.

"It's already been a little absurd, but that would just be ridiculous," says Daniels, the recruiting analyst. "You're talking about four of the top five players in the country. That would be the best class I've seen. Is that possible? I don't know. There's still a lot to play out.

"(Calipari) is basically selecting the guys he wants year in and year out. It's to the point where if he misses on a guy, I'm surprised. It is John Calipari against the rest at this point."

It's not just the winning tradition and recent Final Four appearances that attract top recruits to Lexington and sustain the one-and-done cycle. Celebrities are spotted at Rupp Arena like it's the Staples Center.

Rapper Drake attended the Wildcats alumni game this summer. Randle tweeted a photo of himself and Drake -- an experience he surely won't duplicate on visits to other schools.

"The thing about Kentucky basketball is it's 'in,'" Daniels says. "It's the thing. Not only are they rock stars on campus, they get to hang out with their idols and icons and rap stars. It's as close as you're going to get to a professional environment at the college basketball level."

Not everyone is a fan of that environment.

Calipari has attracted plenty of critics over his career, but particularly during the last couple of years. Some coaches and administrators have spoken out against what they think is akin to a one-year loaner program, letting kids play basketball for a few months as a pit stop on their way to the NBA.

"We're not here as a feeder system," then-Stanford athletics director and new Big 12 Commissioner Bob Bowlsby told USA TODAY Sports in March. "We're here to educate young people, and that's what it ought to be about."

Even before his stint at Kentucky, Calipari was a scrutinized figure.

Calipari coached two teams — Massachusetts in 1996 and Memphis in 2008 — whose Final Four appearances were vacated because of NCAA rules violations. Calipari, who got to Lexington before the Memphis violations surfaced, wasn't implicated in either NCAA investigation.

Calipari has cracked jokes about these dark spots -- when news reporters asked him in February about turning 53, he quipped, "Two years were vacated, so I am really 51."

But mostly, Calipari gets his last laugh looking at the win column. He has posted a 102-14 record in three seasons at Kentucky, never losing before the Elite Eight in the NCAA tournament.

Other critics point to potential problems with recruiting highly touted players who are used to carrying the load for their high school or AAU teams. How do you get them to play good defense? Can they share the ball? Will they score enough points to stay happy?

Calipari says he doesn't need to beg players to come to Kentucky, and he says he doesn't promise them they'll play a certain amount of minutes and get a certain number of shots a game.

"It's going to be harder if they continue to bring in top freshmen and just rotate them in to put up ridiculous numbers, because there are so many guys vying for them," Daniels says.

To counter that, Calipari preaches unselfishness. His prime example is Davis, who won every individual player award available last season -- while taking the fourth-most shots on the team.

Veteran presence

Part of what has enabled Kentucky's one-year players to succeed is the veteran players around them.

Last season, they had senior Darius Miller, who apparently had no qualms about coming off the bench.

Kentucky needs role players to fill in around the elite freshmen. Daniels says his criticism of Calipari's recruiting is that he hasn't gotten enough contributors to mix into the lineup with the stars.

Calipari explains it's not easy to convince a top-50 or top-60 player -- who could start at a number of Division I schools -- that he should instead be Kentucky's sixth, seventh or eighth man.

He has been lucky, with players such as Miller and other upperclassmen with experience stepping into those roles.

This season, one player really fits that description.

"That's going to be an issue," Daniels says. "There's not a lot of depth."

Kyle Wiltjer averaged 11.6 minutes a game last season; no other returning player averaged more than three. Heading into last year, the 'Cats had three starters (including Miller) coming back from a Final Four-caliber team.

Wiltjer calls himself a veteran, which is strange to hear from a sophomore anywhere outside of Lexington.

"I'm kind of instinctively taking on that role because I've already been through it," Wiltjer says. "The (freshmen) come in and ask little questions like where to go and stuff like that. We just try to show them around, and I'm willing to do whatever role our team needs to be successful. It was definitely weird coming back in the summer and having most of the guys I'm used to seeing not there."

The new makeup of the roster has taken some of the pressure off, several players say. There's no emphasis on defending last season's national championship because it's a completely different team.

Noel has been hailed as Anthony Davis 2.0 because of his shot-blocking and length, but Calipari says that's not fair.

"He's not Anthony Davis," he says. "They don't need to be compared because Anthony Davis may be -- of the last 20 years --one of the most unique players there have been. I just know he's unique. To compare anyone else to him, it's unfair."

Same with the team. It will be difficult for Kentucky to replicate the combination of talent and selflessness that produced 38 wins, a Southeastern Conference championship and a national title.

But these players will try. These freshmen want to win their own title. Noel says he's ready to face the pressure of playing at Kentucky. Poythress says this squad's greatest challenge will be coming together and jelling on the court.

"We're all unselfish players," Poythress says. "Nobody cares if you get two shots or 12 shots. We're just trying to win the game."

Winning will help the players prepare themselves for the next level, which is Calipari's ultimate goal. It also helps perpetuate the cycle.

Next phase: winning.

Contributing: Eric Prisbell