Head Coach John Calipari:
On Florida ...
“They’re good. Everybody is excited about playing us. I’d imagine they were because they played us good both games. My team’s – we had a great practice today. I think they’re ready to play basketball, whoever it is. They’re capable of beating us. No question.”
On the dangers of playing a desperate team trying to play their way into the NCAA Tournament ... “I mean, I think every team has a desperation about one thing or another. It will all come down to, okay, how are you playing? Do you have a team that is going to let go of the rope? Ten, 12 minute mark sees the season over and I’m just not fighting anymore. Do you have a team that is really going to fight until the bitter end? You’re seeing a lot of those kinds of games. My concern is my team and no one else. I just want my team to play at their best. If that’s not good enough we’ll go back and get ready for the seeding.”
On the team staying in the moment ...
“I told them a long time ago that they’re not going to realize what they just went through until it’s all said and done. We have a sign outside of our media room or our video room where we go in, ‘Where’s the time gone?’ It’s just flown by. Like I said, I have one concern, my team playing well. If that’s not good enough, then you go back and you get ready for the tournament. They were great in practice. They have a great spirit about them. Any team in this tournament is good enough to beat us. The question, ‘Will we play at our best?’ (And if we do) will make it hard for anyone to beat us. But, they still can.”
On preparing for games in a short period of time ...
“Oh, it changes. We won’t have a shoot around tomorrow. We will just go right to the gym. If we’re lucky enough to win we won’t have a shoot around on Saturday. If you’re lucky enough to win you won’t have one Sunday. You’ll come back and let the next game finish and do some film and walk through and just play basketball games. You’re not really doing anything. Tonight – today was our last (normal day) we did a 30 minute shoot around at the building. Then we did an hour and five minute practice tonight. So, we’ll have a walk through tonight and we’ll watch some more tape of these guys and see if there’s anything else I need to see.”
On Willie Cauley‐Stein not looking right lately and if he looked right Thursday in practice ...
“Oh yeah. We feed off him. He’s that one guy that can do stuff a normal player can’t do, and he hasn’t been doing it. He’s been getting scored on, he’s missing a lot of shots just by—they’re physical with him and he’s not balanced coming back. But I think he’ll be fine.”
On Florida ...
“They’re good. Everybody is excited about playing us. I’d imagine they were because they played us good both games. My team’s – we had a great practice today. I think they’re ready to play basketball, whoever it is. They’re capable of beating us. No question.”
On the dangers of playing a desperate team trying to play their way into the NCAA Tournament ... “I mean, I think every team has a desperation about one thing or another. It will all come down to, okay, how are you playing? Do you have a team that is going to let go of the rope? Ten, 12 minute mark sees the season over and I’m just not fighting anymore. Do you have a team that is really going to fight until the bitter end? You’re seeing a lot of those kinds of games. My concern is my team and no one else. I just want my team to play at their best. If that’s not good enough we’ll go back and get ready for the seeding.”
On the team staying in the moment ...
“I told them a long time ago that they’re not going to realize what they just went through until it’s all said and done. We have a sign outside of our media room or our video room where we go in, ‘Where’s the time gone?’ It’s just flown by. Like I said, I have one concern, my team playing well. If that’s not good enough, then you go back and you get ready for the tournament. They were great in practice. They have a great spirit about them. Any team in this tournament is good enough to beat us. The question, ‘Will we play at our best?’ (And if we do) will make it hard for anyone to beat us. But, they still can.”
On preparing for games in a short period of time ...
“Oh, it changes. We won’t have a shoot around tomorrow. We will just go right to the gym. If we’re lucky enough to win we won’t have a shoot around on Saturday. If you’re lucky enough to win you won’t have one Sunday. You’ll come back and let the next game finish and do some film and walk through and just play basketball games. You’re not really doing anything. Tonight – today was our last (normal day) we did a 30 minute shoot around at the building. Then we did an hour and five minute practice tonight. So, we’ll have a walk through tonight and we’ll watch some more tape of these guys and see if there’s anything else I need to see.”
On Willie Cauley‐Stein not looking right lately and if he looked right Thursday in practice ...
“Oh yeah. We feed off him. He’s that one guy that can do stuff a normal player can’t do, and he hasn’t been doing it. He’s been getting scored on, he’s missing a lot of shots just by—they’re physical with him and he’s not balanced coming back. But I think he’ll be fine.”
On how close his players are to being the best individual players they can be ...
“We have some guys that are playing better than they’ve ever played in their life, and now the question is as you go into these last few weeks, you talk about how do you add two or three percent to your game? And I’ll give you an example: Trey Lyles’ two or three percent may be flying up and down the court. Just go a little harder and attacking the backboard rebounding just a little bit harder. Aaron (Harrison) may be attacking the basket, not settling. Will you be a defensive playmaker on every possession? Can you notch it up two or three percent? The same with Andrew (Harrison). So each guy has their own little thing that they can do a little bit better at, and that’s what we’re trying to get them to think in terms of. How do you grow a little bit now as we wind this thing down?”
On if he can visualize that his team would like if everybody does that?
“We’ve had some games this year. You know what it looks like.”
On if he’s watched Florida yet ...
“I have not yet.”
On Florida looking good ...
“I would imagine that. They’re healthy. They’ve got a full complement of guys. They should be confident. They played us twice really good.”
On using this tournament to get other guys going before the real thing similar to Darius Miller in 2012 ... “Yeah, that was—Darius, if you remember, had no points in the first two games and wound down the season and those first two games and was really not playing the way he was capable of playing. And then Michael (Kidd‐Gilchrist) had him start in his place and took a lot of shots. We were up five with a few minutes to go and lost that game, and then from that point Darius went to that next level, which is why we won the whole thing. But I want everybody to walk in here walking away from this tournament feeling good about who they are, what they can be and what we can be. Like, wow, if we’re all doing our thing we can be pretty good.”
On if he gets a sense from the freshmen about this tournament and what he’s done to prepare them ... “Really, nothing. I just think these guys have a toughness to them, have an edge to them. When you’re that skilled as a player you’re going to be a little more confident. It’s hard to rattle you. When you’re not skilled and you’re just banking on playing hard or doing those kinds of things, that’s when it becomes rough.”
On how he tackles the psychology of going undefeated with his players and if he talks to them about it ... “No. It was really funny, we had Bob Rotella come and do some individuals and meet with our team and I told him that the way I was approaching it was that I just wanted the regular season over. Let’s get on with the real stuff. We had two weeks left. And I told him, ‘If we get dinged, we get dinged. Let’s just get on with this.’ And he said to me, ‘Well, they don’t feel that way.’ So, it’s kind of neat to know that they are not of afraid of what’s going on. We’ve been in positions, even late, where we’ve had to make plays, and they did. So I don’t think they’re afraid of it and I think they have confidence in each other that someone will do something. Like, Willie hasn’t played well in the last two weeks, but it’s OK because someone else has stepped up and done it. Dakari and Marcus Lee, one game, I mean, kept us in a game or we’d be down 10. Our guard play at times, the same. If this guy or that guy doesn’t play well, these two have played well. But we haven’t addressed it.”
On whether this feels like a different part of the season ...
“The real part starts when Sunday we hear how tough our bracket’s going to be. That’s when the real stuff starts. This is three days—three games in three days, if you can win. And it will not change our seed. It never has. Whether we’ve won this thing, maybe if we lose it’ll change it. But I don’t know. I don’t believe so. So we’re doing this—I told them, let’s have a ball for the fans, let our fans know that we’re here doing this for you and we’re going to have fun and play as hard as we can. We can’t guarantee you that we’ll win, but we understand that fans can’t get in Rupp Arena come here.”
On whether it’s good to have veterans who understand the importance to fans ...
“They’ll see it if they don’t know. When we walk into the game they’ll be like, ‘What in the world is this?’ ”
On UK fans attending games on Wednesday night ...
“Well somebody told me sometimes those people didn’t have tickets to any other games so they bought those tickets. (Reporter asks, ‘So what do you think of that?’) I think they’re crazy, but I’ve said it before. They’re nuts. But it makes them what they are and they’re passionate about letting everybody know, ‘I’m a Kentucky fan.’ Now if you want to buy tickets, you better wear orange, maroon, red. You better not be in a blue. Have another jersey on because they’re not selling you the ticket. That’s just how it is.”
On whether fan support can help the team ...
“Yeah, I guess. But we’ve been on the road, we’ve been at home, been in neutral sites. I guess it would be better that we had more fans than the other team, but this comes down to us being a good basketball team and playing well. And I keep saying it: I’m concerned about my team. No one else. If someone else is playing out of their minds and we get beat, we get beat. My thing is, how do we continue to grow and be at our best? And if that’s not good enough, it’s not good enough.”
On what he expects UK’s bracket to look like ...
“The NCAA bracket? It’ll be hard. It’ll be hard. They called the Lakers and they can’t pull out of the NBA right now so I don’t think they’ll be in there. But it’ll be a hard bracket. There won’t be a you’re the (top) one seed, you should have this kind of road. No. It will not be that. And that’s fine. This team, went through it a year ago. We went through it just about every year so it’s fine.”
On whether there are any teams he doesn’t want in UK’s bracket ...
“Yeah, I really—I think if we had to see Oklahoma City or Cleveland, those would be tough. I’m not sure. And they tell me that Portland’s as big as we are. So those would be teams I wouldn’t want to see. I hate to say that because they may try to get those people in there.”
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