WILDCAT OFFENSE-DEFENSE
The University of Kentucky will enter the 1969-70 basketball season with virtually the same offense and defense brought to Wildcatland four decades ago by Adolph Rupp, the nation's winningest coach.
The offense is basically set on 10 plays centered around the pivot-post. Rupp has made only two changes in the offense which he brought here in 1930.
One is a play he designed 10 years ago to provide more shooting opportunities for Johnny Cox, lone returnee from the "Fiddlin' Five" which won the 1958 NCAA championship.
The other innovation was a combination of the single post and shuffle offenses.
Wildcat fans this season can again look for the tricky shuffle, copied from some other teams which employed it successfully. Rupp added very little to the shuffle; in fact, his version isn't as elaborate as that of most teams employing the system.
He will also utilize the shuffle to take advantage of the fine speed of the Wildcat guard corps.
In 1966, Rupp also personally put in what was known as the "Stack" offense, which he didn't use at all that season. He explained the offense was installed for use against one team whose defense seemed less adaptable to the Stack.
Rupp will not use the Stack much this year, preferring to rely primarily on the other two offenses due to the fact he has excellent material"Possibly our best in years"to go with the Pivot-Post offense.
The Wildcat defense will be changed slightly from the man-to-man which has been so good to Rupp in his previous 39 seasons at UK. The original defense left the burden strictly up to individual defensive men with no switching permitted; however, Rupp changed the defense in recent years to permit some switching due to tight screens.
Rupp promises to work harder on defense, utilizing his time-honored system, because of "disappointment with some of our other defenses last season."
"We're going back to man-to-man as near as possible to that employed some 1 0 years ago," he said.
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