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UNIVERSITY OF KENTUCKY BASKETBALL MEDIA CONFERENCE

November 18, 2019

John Calipari

Lexington, Kentucky

Kentucky - 82, Utah Valley - 74

JOHN CALIPARI: Well, he's probably going to be in pain tomorrow, but there was never a doubt in my mind who I was putting on that line for those technicals. Never. Coaches said, bup, bup, stop. Ashton, you're shooting. And part of it is you got to, late in the game, have the courage to not be afraid to lose. I told these guys we had a couple guys that had baskets and they just, you know, and free throws and I remember saying to Sam Cassell when I was coaching him, kid made so many game winners and game-winning free throws and I said, how do you do it? He said I'm not afraid to miss. I'm not afraid to miss a game winner. I'll be good with it. We still have young guys that are playing not to lose. You can't play that way. I was so proud of Johnny Juzang, so proud of him. He got a rebound late, he made those free throws late, he's been in the gym on his own, he's spending the extra time and it paid off tonight.

Our issue right now is you can't go and make one three-point field goal. So we got to go and figure out, okay, how are we going to do this? Now, we had some guys that were wide open and almost shot air balls that are kids that make threes. So probably some of this is mental, game in the balance, are not ready to be in that position. I don't care how good you are. Maybe not ready to be in that position yet. But you can't have a team make 11 and you make one. How did we win the game? We had nine offensive rebounds at half. I was ecstatic. We have three in the second half. That's, we can't win with those two numbers. And so we got to get back, we made a couple things offensively, we changed and I like what I saw. They went zone and we're still learning how to play against it. We had to play through Ashton. If we didn't play through Ashton we really did not get a shot.

But, and here again, I know you may not know this, but E.J.'s not been playing and today we didn't have Immanuel. So like we have seven scholarship players. So like I'm happy that we won the game. Now we got to get those guys back and get going because Nick played too many minutes. Nick played good until he played too many minutes. The same with Nate. The minute they play those extra, eight, nine minutes, they back up. But let me -- Utah Valley played well. Those threes that they made, gave them a chance to win. And then we had to come back and make free throws, which we did. But that, Mark's done a great job with that team, really has.

Q. Did the three-point shooting have anything to do with adjusting to the new line or is it something else?
JOHN CALIPARI: Doesn't seem like anybody else is having a problem with it. But we go through this every year. I think part of it is I've got to figure out maybe there's an offense that we're running that I just say we're trying to get threes off. This offense is trying to get threes. Maybe we get into that. But again, there were rebounds late, guys couldn't get. But Johnny got. Then Ashton grabbed. And there were things that happened in that game late that I look at, like, I got on Tyrese because I told him, don't let that guy catch the ball. Because he's not playing well, he's not engaged with us. So he just let the guy catch it and the guy makes a three. What did you understand what I said to you? I was thinking in the apple of my bike. What? I told you exactly, do not let him catch the ball and you let him just run and catch it and throw it and then make a three. That's the stuff young kids, if they're not playing well, they're not locked into the team, they're into themselves. It takes time here. Today, without two veterans, Immanuel and E.J., whew. And I was trying to be as positive as I could be until the end I couldn't take it anymore.

Q. Have you ever been in a situation where you've had to piece together so much this early and are you learning new things about yourself and coaching?
JOHN CALIPARI: I haven't -- we have been blessed here to not have many injuries. I mean, we just haven't. Nerlens, but all in all we haven't had it. And that's why I've had a roster of 10, 11 guys, because we just haven't had injuries and I feel more comfortable that you get, everybody gets a chance to show what they should do and then it shakes out. Like today Johnny proved that he should play more, just what shakes out. So but what just happened kind of puts you, the alarm bells go off. We had seven scholarship guys. Do you understand if they fouled out three guys I was either playing walk-ons or a four-man zone. I was telling guys, don't be fouling. Don't foul. But the other side of it is, like I said, Nick and Nate played too many minutes. Those extra seven, eight, nine, ten minutes, it wipes them out. They stop playing, they get, they don't get back, they get run into a screen, we don't rebound, we don't block a shot, we don't have the energy and spirit you got to play with to be good. And this is all -- I got to figure out a lot of this. And then I got to give it to them. Part of this is they got to get experience, like, quickly. But just, you can't skip steps, guys, you can't. It is what it is. We are who we are right now. We are what the score says we are.

Q. Late in that game it looked like Kahlil dislocated a finger, ran down on defense --
JOHN CALIPARI: Yeah, and almost grabbed the ball.

Q. -- almost got the rebound and snapped his own finger back in and gave the thumbs up and kept playing. How what did you make of that and how he is?
JOHN CALIPARI: It was all taped up, but I mentioned it after. Think about that. I talked about Johnny after, I talked about Ashton's free throws after, I talked about that play, I mean, think about it. Like, his finger popped out and he went down and tried to rebound that way. But we're, like I said, they went zone and we tried some different -- and it was like, okay, one thing is giving us a chance. You can't be that team. I mean we got to, we did some good stuff in the pick up high and got in the middle of the zone. And having Nick behind the zone makes them stay back because you get lobs. Like, you get lob dunks. And they don't want to give up that. So.

Q. For information, what was Immanuel's issue that he couldn't play?
JOHN CALIPARI: He got hurt yesterday in practice, the last play of the practice. So he got hit and it was too hurt to play. And he's one that if he could have played he would have. No question.

Q. In your mind is there an answer to how the same guys can make 31 of 34 free throws but only one of 12 threes?
JOHN CALIPARI: That's what our staff just said. How do you do that? And then -- again, what Sam Cassell said. You cannot be afraid to miss. Even Nate was pulling back. That means you're afraid you're going to miss. You can't play that way. I'll say this again, folks, everybody that comes in here has nothing to lose. They have nothing to lose. So you know what? You have to play like you have nothing to lose. You have to play the same way, which is why in March we have a big advantage. But I don't know if we can get to March. I'm, like, what, we got to start playing better. And you know, defensively we are doing some good stuff, but it shows, Ashton has to be on the floor and he's got to be that guy because, again, he was caught -- if you watched, he was leading, he was bringing them together, calming guys down. But again, not everybody was locked into our team. And it's understood. They're young kids.

Q. With the way Nick played today, his second double double in three games, only his third in his career, what's it going to take for him to make sure that he keeps up that consistency and doesn't let himself down?
JOHN CALIPARI: Well, we ran some stuff to him and we got guys that, again, we ran a play where we called it the whole way down what we were running and the one guy wasn't listening because he had not played great and he ran right in front of Nick. And Nick was wide open to get another basket. But for Nick, again, you got to score some around the goal. But what you're finding out, Nick, may be not a three-point shooter, but he may be, are you ready for this, folks? Our best shooter. When you get him at 12 feet, he makes those shots. He may be our best -- so now we're saying, okay, let's get him to 12 feet, let's do stuff to get him to an elbow. You saw the short corner shots he's taking. It's what we want him to do because he's good. But you got to get some free ones. He's 7-foot tall.

Q. T.J. Washington was so hot in the second half. Was that just a guy going off or what was going on?
JOHN CALIPARI: Have you ever seen that here before? Again, when you have nothing to lose and you're taking 30-footers, and they're going in, like, one of them it was, I told him after, it was my choice to go zone. Can you imagine? Like, I went zone. Now do you understand why I hate zone? I went zone and the wing left him. Like, left him. Backed away. And the kid gets a wide open three. Bang. That got him going. Then he makes the next one, then he makes the next one. All of a sudden I'm saying, what in the world? But that happens here. But if we don't go 1-12 from the three, 1-12, I will -- please, all you people that watch this video, you'll watch the tape six times, more than I will, look at all the threes and slow them down and see how open guys were. But only 12 threes? You know, we're getting fouled so we're getting to the rim. It's what I want us to do, but we need to take around 20. I'm saying 18, 19, 20 threes, maybe 21. I don't want to shoot 30. That's not how we play. I want to get to the foul line. But if you're getting to the foul line or you're posting the ball, you're open on that perimeter. And let me say this, this is something that you could tell your child. You don't have to make every shot. You just can't miss them all. You can't miss them all. You don't have to make them all. Just can't miss every shot. Thank goodness we were 1-12. We almost missed every shot. And we still won. I'm happy we won, guys. Let me just tell you, you know, this season as long as it goes and being here and knowing how teams play against us, and how they're charged up and then the next game they don't play as well. They just don't. It always -- if I -- I'm not a gambler, but if I was, I would probably say the minute, okay, who played? They beat Kentucky? I'm against them the next game. I mean that, we, the team just gives everything so we're in these kind of games. Hopefully we're better than this but right now what you're seeing is who we are. We got to get E.J. back, got to get Immanuel back and figure out what we are.

Q. Just to clarify, when do you think you'll have Immanuel back and do you --
JOHN CALIPARI: I don't know that yet. Hopefully, hopefully he and E.J. begin to -- hopefully, maybe this weekend. Maybe not. I'm not forcing them to come back -- I mean it's, they got to, you know, they got to figure it out. But I will say, when you're us and you have a veteran team with some young guys, veterans are out and it's all young guys and just a couple veterans? Whew. Things are hard.

Q. You finished with just six scholarship guys. Do you worry at all that Whitney will miss any time or is that the kind of thing that he can keep playing with?
JOHN CALIPARI: I don't know yet. Let's hope he doesn't.

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