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UNIVERSITY OF KENTUCKY BASKETBALL MEDIA CONFERENCEJanuary 18, 2014John CalipariKentucky – 74 Q.  Not many teams beat you guys on the boards. They did. How did you like the way you found ways to win and the free‑throw shooting? COACH CALIPARI: Yeah, our guards didn't rebound. Many of those balls were over our bigs' heads and they were in a mud wrestling match down in there. The balls came over, and you had Moore grabbing rebounds; he gets three. You had guys over the top‑‑ our guards didn't rebound. And then Stokes outworked our big guys. He just outworked them. There was a free ball and he got them, almost every one. But what I did like, we were strong with the ball. We put more pressure. They're a team that run great stuff and post the ball, and I couldn't get certain guys to pressure the ball. You're out. And there goes Jarrod. How did he look? Then there goes Dominique. How did he look? And it proves that there are games where you've really got to get up and play because they're not trying to play fast. They're trying to get motion and they're trying to post it. That's a good team. Tennessee is not going to lose many in our league. I'm just happy we don't have to see them again until tournament time possibly, and I hope we don't see them there. They're a physical team. McRae is as good as they get. Their guard play, they've got length. They come off the bench with Reese, who's a different kind of big guy. They run their stuff. Cuonzo has got them guarding. They're really physical. They'll bump and grind. Maymon came back, and look at him; he's a beast. Q. Talk about the boost that Dakari gave you off the bench today. COACH CALIPARI: Well, Willie didn't play as well as he'd been playing, and we went with Dakari and he was terrific. What happened was we played through Julius in the first half, and you notice we kind of put him on different spots out on the court and then told him to beat the guy on the dribble, and he created for his teammates. In the second half we tried it, but they crowded him and he held the ball too long, so he tried to go one more dribble than he really needed to because they were crowding him, so we went through Andrew, and Andrew did an unbelievable‑‑ that's who I expect. Maybe not 10 out of 10, I'll give him a 9 out of 10 free throws. But what he did in pick‑and‑rolls; he got in the lane; he made the right play; he had no turnovers; he made big shots, the runner, the pull‑up jumper; and he ran our team. He played like a point guard. So he got better today, he really did. Alex was good again. You guys are looking at numbers, I'm not. Alex was good again, deserved to be out there that last rebound the end of half where he mixed it up. It was a rough game. Some of the guys are in for a rough game, other guys on our team don't play as well when it's rough. Q. What did you see in Andrew that said, okay, I can put the ball in his hands and he's ready to do this? COACH CALIPARI: Well, we've been working really hard on pick‑and‑roll stuff for him and trying to teach him the pace of the game and how fast you have to go off the screen, how you have to set your man up‑‑ how you have to attack the big man. What he was doing was messing with the ball. All the stuff, and then not covering any ground and not putting any pressure, and we've just been working on weeks on him doing that, and I thought initially we were trying to go over the top and then we told him, turn him down. You go and attack the 5 man, and he did a great job. He's big, he's got size, so it's not like a 6‑foot guard going in there. He did good stuff. Q. Every college you have somebody that wants to know what you're doing to work on free throws or wants a new guru to come in. What happened today? COACH CALIPARI: Well, we did something new in the last two days, and it's something that is unique and something that‑‑ I don't know if it's ever been done, but we went in the pool and we put on those pool baskets, and we got them to get down and just start making them for the mental part of it. It worked. And if you believe that, I've got great land to sell. (Laughter.) I had this whole room. You people... Q. The way they beat you in Knoxville last year, did you sense the returning players had a little more juice for this game? COACH CALIPARI: No, they were going to do the same thing. The game was 6‑0. I had to call a time‑out, had to get some guys out of the game. Had to change up what we were doing. They make it hard because it's hard to go switch pick‑and‑rolls with them because they're so big. Even if you switch behind, you're really giving them something that they do well. So it made it hard. We didn't play the pick‑and‑roll great. Andrew got hung up on just about every pick‑and‑roll again. We were trying to switch late. Our bigs didn't do a good job of squaring off the ball handler. But again, they beat our brains in. I mean, I can remember in the tournament a few years ago when we beat their brains in, like by 50. It's how this stuff is. This was a close game. We played them in close games. They beat us bad, we beat them bad. They're Tennessee. They're really good. Cuonzo is‑‑ again, they defend, they rebound, they run their stuff, they get baskets close to the rim. They've got a player who can get his own. Like I told them, the play that McRae made down the left side where he just stepped back and we had two arms on him and a guy falling at him and he swished it easily, I looked at my staff, I said, "Oh, my; I hope he doesn't get that going because there's no defense for that." Q. You talked about you have some guys that just aren't in for a rough game. Is that Willie? That's two games this week that he's kind of stepped back. COACH CALIPARI: Well, but he's owning his performance. See, there's a difference, and what we try to teach our players here, sometimes we do it nicely, other times we don't do it nicely, but they have to own their performance. I'm talking clutter. The clutter around them enables them. In other words, it wasn't your fault; he likes the other guy more; if you had as many shots as so and so. You can't‑‑ look, own your performance. Own it. You did it, you own it. Own your practice performance. Don't make an excuse. Don't alibi.  Own it, and then change it if you want to change it. So I think that's why our guys leave here knowing we don't have excuse makers. If you didn't play well, you didn't play well. Willie didn't play well. James, it was a rough game. He didn't play well. That's just how it is. He did okay, but he was a non‑factor in the game. So now own it and change it. Q. What was the difference for Julius in the second half, and was there any of the fatigue or cramping stuff‑‑ COACH CALIPARI: No, they just went at him, and he didn't give it up quick enough and I wasn't comfortable with what I was seeing, so I just said spread the court, we're going with Andrew. It had nothing to do with anything in the first half. We isolated him and made them come off and he made a quick pass. He had those assists. Second half he held it a little long, tried to go one extra bounce, and that's the old stuff that creates the turnovers. So we just went away. These things, you're trying to do what you can to win the game, and then you deal with egos after. Let's just win, and I'll deal with all that stuff after. Again, he's a physical player. He gave them trouble. Q. 44 percent three‑point shooting. With what you guys already do well offensively, can this performance elevate you to that level that you'd like to be at offensively? COACH CALIPARI: Well, the biggest thing is we're not a team that's going to shoot 25 threes. That's not who we are. We're a driving team. We're a post‑up team. We're a rebounding team. I want us to be a vicious defensive team so we can get out and run because we're fast. But if you jam us in, we will shoot threes. Now, we have had games like this and we've had other games where we're 1 for 12. My thing to them is if you think you are missing, you're probably going to miss, so step in and shoot a two. If you know‑‑ you're in the frame of mind, I'm making this, do it. The second thing I'm telling the passer, tell the guy to shoot it: "Shoot it! Shoot it!" Because then that'll build his confidence; dude wants me to shoot it, I'll let it go. So we're trying to get these guys‑‑ again, I've got all 18‑, 19‑year‑old kids. This is all new, how to finish a game. James Young took it out of bounds. Why did you take it out? I was close to the ball. Really? You're not supposed to take it out, whether you're close to the ball, far from the ball, the ball hits you in the head. You don't take it out. Why did you do it? I don't know. We get a lot of that. All I can tell you is we're going to continue to work. This team is getting better. They're playing and fighting. They're playing together. They're executing better. Again, we held a pretty good team to 41 percent from the floor. Last game we held them to 37, out‑rebounded them by 18. They may have done a few things and we broke down a little bit, but we're moving the right way. Q. Is Dakari about on target for what you'd expect, and does it take a bigger player a little longer to develop at this level? COACH CALIPARI: Big players develop later, but again, all these guys, they've got to eliminate the clutter. You've got to quit‑‑ own your performance, come in, practice and work. And again, this is not a disrespectful thing, but you know how you get letters, and if there's an addressed envelope, like I will never‑‑ my secretary doesn't give me any unaddressed letters. They're torn up, so I don't even see them. But someone sends me something about play more guys. If you play more guys, which is‑‑ different teams. It's harder when you've got a young team to play more guys because you're trying to get your team right. But the second point I said, this is with all due respect, in 2010 when I called Coach Wooden about my team, he told me I play too many guys. You need to play six or seven, maybe eight max if somebody is in foul trouble. All kind of ways of doing this. He was behind Willie; how well was Willie playing? Not a whole lot of minutes there. Now Willie is not playing as well, now you go do your minutes and prove you should play more. Own your performance. And he did. I'm proud of him. I'm proud of Alex. You know, all these guys, I didn't put Jon Hood in today. Jon has had the greatest attitude and the greatest approach and has grown so much in the time he's been here, I just see him, like what do you want to do, do you want to get into coaching? What do you really want to do? But you just see the growth. Sometimes you see it fast; Alex it's taken time. So what? What if it takes two years, three years? So? It does take time. Thanks. FastScripts Transcript by ASAP Sports |
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