Here in the first days of the college basketball season, Kentucky coach John Calipari walks that fine line that separates brilliance from madness. For that, we all owe him a debt of gratitude. By doing so, he has made November so much more interesting.

He also has made his team, at the very least in the short term, more vulnerable. Instead of substituting in conventional manner, Calipari has what has become known as a Blue team and a White team and rotates them five at a time.

Kentucky boasts nine McDonald’s All-Americans, plus potential lottery pick Willie Caulie-Stein. A surplus of depth can work against a coach once players transfer, or even before that if they squawk to teammates and/or parents about the coach derailing their impending multi-million-dollar careers. More often, it works in favor of a coach, and not just for the obvious reasons of withstanding injuries and foul trouble.

Excess depth works for coaches because it makes those just outside the rotation work all the harder to earn a spot on the floor. It has the same impact on those wanting to hold onto their minutes. The result: Really talented athletes practicing when really turned up, making themselves and teammates better. It accelerates the growth process.

Calipari has made a successful career doing it that way. Now he wants to see if a better way exists. So far, so-so, at best.

Kentucky struggled in its second game, leading Buffalo by just five points at the half.

Calipari revealed at his Monday news conference that not all those questioning his system are outside his office in the locker room. One of his assistants, he said, started to bring it up at the half: “Somebody on my staff said, ‘Do you want to….’ ‘Stop. We’re playing the way we play, and we’re figuring it out. So, no. We’re playing how we play.'”

Ten players average 16 minutes or more. Cauley-Stein leads the team with 24.5 minutes, the extra time courtesy of Karl-Anthony Towns’ foul trouble.

Calipari’s stated reason for breaking out the platoon system is to give all 10 mega talents legitimate playing time in games so that he can have a better idea of what they can do.

“I know what is coming down the pike, and I’m fine with it,” Calipari said, meaning criticism. “Everybody thought, ‘Well, watch, he won’t do it in the second half,'” Calipari said of the Buffalo game. “I platooned in the second half the same way. If Karl didn’t get in foul trouble, we’d have went straight by the line. Now if someone goes in there and they are not playing, they are not going, you’re out. You just lose your minutes. Look, I’m enjoying doing it. I’m enjoying it because I know no kid is getting left behind. I know the easiest thing for me to do is play seven guys.”

He’s right. If he pared his rotation, he would be doing what everyone does, and nobody criticizes that. You have to love him for having the courage to buck convention. But in the end, he’ll likely do it the way everybody else does.

Beyond the motivational benefits of making players battle for minutes, one substitution at a time, replacing all five presupposes teenagers are consistent. More than anybody, teenagers have good days and bad, just as basketball players in general have hot nights and cold ones. You play the guys feeling it that night and sit the ones whose focus has drifted. Their nights will come, just not tonight, maybe not this year, maybe not even at this school. Some will transfer. It’s the cost of doing business in rarefied air.

In Calipari’s perfect world, he’ll play two platoons of five. Both groups will develop phenomenal chemistry because they’ll play with the same guys all the time. Foul trouble will become rare because nobody will play excessive minutes, and everybody will be fresher and therefore less likely to commit a foul.

Perfection is an illusion, best left on the playgrounds of daydreamers.