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Myron Medcalf, ESPN Staff Writer
As he prepares for his first season at Arkansas, John Calipari said he won’t stack his rosters with an abundance of talent, which was his tactic during his lengthy tenure at Kentucky.
On the latest episode of his “Ways to Win” podcast with former Oregon State head coach Craig Robinson, Calipari said the turnover in college basketball in the transfer portal era has changed his philosophy on assembling rosters.
“You may think I’m crazy, but I told my staff I only want to have eight or nine guys,” Calipari told Robinson, who is now executive director of the National Association of Basketball Coaches. “They’re leaving anyway, and why would I develop a kid for someone else? Why would I do that?”
Calipari said he has talked to other coaches who have discussed similar strategies.
According to NCAA rules, a team can have up to 13 scholarship players. While most teams rarely utilize every scholarship player on the roster, the idea of using fewer scholarships because of the turnover that the bulk of Division I teams have endured in recent years could signal a major shift within the sport.
Calipari has already added seven players to his first Arkansas roster, a group that includes former Kentucky commit Boogie Fland, who is a five-star prospect, and former Florida Atlantic star Johnell Davis.
But he said he wants to use the other spots on his roster for walk-ons and rely on those non-scholarship players and graduate assistants to help the team prepare for its opponents next season. He noted that women’s college basketball teams often use non-staffers to help them in practice.
“I want those [graduate assistants] to have played in Europe or just got done playing and can still play,” he said. “We can use them in practice. The women’s programs have five guys that they call ‘managers,’ but that’s who they scrimmage against. Maybe I do it that way. We have some walk-ons, we have some [graduate assistants], we have eight or nine guys and that’s it. And if there is a 10th guy, he knows he’s the 10th guy.”
Calipari said his staff cautioned that an injury could create challenges with a shortened roster. But he said he’s comfortable with the concept because he has played small rotations in the past.
“I coached six [players] when I was at UMass,” he said.