Talent Surplus Prompts Pitino To Ponder Jvs

With an abundance of talent on next season’s squad, Kentucky coach Rick Pitino is thinking about adding a junior varsity team.

Pitino said a junior varsity would afford reserve players a chance to play and allow him to use a rotation of eight or nine for the varsity.

He said finding enough minutes to satisfy all his players last season became a headache for the first time in his career.

“It was one of the most annoying things I’ve been through as a coach,” Pitino said Tuesday. “We’re not going to have that next year.”

Counting Rodrick Rhodes, who will attend a preNBA draft camp next month, Kentucky will have 17 players on its roster next season. If Rhodes departs for the NBA, the Wildcats would meet the maximum of 13 scholarship players, plus have walk-ons Cameron Mills, Jason Lathrem and Derek Anderson.

Pitino ruled out redshirting players such as leading scorer Tony Delk, Walter McCarty, Mark Pope and Anderson to keep the playing time manageable. Either Jeff Sheppard or Anthony Epps will be spared redshirting, he said.

Two incoming freshmen, Ron Mercer and Wayne Turner, would presumably not be redshirted. Jarred Prickett has indicated he would accept a redshirt year.

Asked if he thought any players would transfer, Pitino said, “We won’t lose any players, not to my knowledge.”

He mentioned Scott Padgett, Allen Edwards, Mills and Lathrem as candidates for the proposed junior varsity team. “It would give them experience in our style,” Pitino said.

Pitino said he got the idea for a junior varsity from North Carolina, which has had a junior varsity team since the NCAA made freshman teams obsolete by making freshmen eligible before the 1972-73 season.

Junior varsity games would count against a player’s eligibility; a player being redshirted cannot play on either the varsity or junior varsity; and a player can play no more than 27 regular-season games regardless.