You can look on the sideline at the Tigers' Recruiting Coordinator Assistant Shyrone Chatman to understand the type of player John Calipari wants on his basketball team. Cal's first year as coach of the Tigers was Chatman's senior season. During Chatman's junior season, he was used primarily as a backup shooting guard, Cal converted him to a starting point guard. Chat led Conference USA in assist-to-turnover ratio as a senior, why? Because he did what Calipari asked him to do.
Cal asks all of his players to be relentless and compete every second of the game. Any player who does that will find time in Calipari's rotation. Consider Scooter McFadgon, who started the majority of the season during the 2000/2001 campaign. Scooter wasn't the scorer that senior Marcus Moody was. Moody once put up 41 points in a game against Oklahoma, but according to coach, he just wasn't the motiviated to play defense on every play and dive for loose balls. McFadgon gave him that. "He only does what he's asked to do," is how Calipari once described McFadgon.
The player who assumed the role when Scooter left was Anthony Rice. Cal's only complaint about Rice is that he was so quiet and wasn't hard enough on his teammates. But Rice would fight through picks, take a charge, and get his teammates involved. Again, Rice was never the best player on the floor, but he would always logged the most minutes.
Antonio Burks was tough as nails and Cal loved that. Burks was a lock down defender, but he could also pass the rock and penetrate the lanes. He was also the player that would get in other players face and tell them when they were not playing hard enough. "He's a mean dude," Calipari would always say about Burks. Yet Burks was the player that would be in the lockerroom promoting the very same basketball principles that Calipari preached during practice. Ideally, Calipari wants his best player to be the hardest working one. With Burks he had that.
As his team prepares for their Sweet Sixteen matchup with Michigan State, Cal's 2007/2008 version of Chatman, McFadgon, Burks, and Rice goes by the name of Antonio Anderson. Certainly not the most talented player on the floor, but clearly the hardest worker and most vocal. Joey Dorsey found out just how no-nonsense Anderson was when as a freshman, the younger Anderson would frequently get on the bigger and older Dorsey's face to tell him all about a bad decision Dorsey made on the court. He quickly established himself as the person his teammates wanted to follow. He set the example both on the court (hustle and work ethic) and off the court (staying away from the trouble some of his teammates just so happen to find). The result, he's averaged more minutes in the past two season, then anyone on the team.
