COACH CALIPARI: No, he called — look, just, I’m trying to empower this team, even with De’Aaron Fox out. So, if they come over and say to me, “Coach, run this,” I always run it. It’s their team. If that’s what you want to run, we’ll run it. What happened on the play out of bounds, we had — the way they were playing that zone, we were going to step Malik in after he threw it in, but I figured they saw it, called a timeout, and then we just put them on the court and had Isaiah who is a great passer, and we had a timeout. It’s something we put in. We had never run that before. And even though he guarded it great, they just made a tough shot.

The kid (Monk) had 30 in the second half, I mean, come on. We barely could get out of the gym. I don’t know how we won, to be honest. One, they played well. We went zone, and I’ve got to give credit to Tony Barbee, I’m not a zone coach. I don’t like zone, and for two days we’ve been playing zone.

We had to do it because we needed to get back to being sharp against it, but we also were playing big lineups with Wenyen (Gabriel) or Derek (Willis) at the three. So we just played zone for two days. So when Tony coached it and I just cringed and saw every —

Look, when we play zone, every shot they shoot is a three and it goes in. And when they play us zone, we can’t make any shots. I don’t understand that, but that’s how it is.

COACH CALIPARI: Look, how much have we played zone since I’ve been here? That game, probably, in total, is how many times I’ve played zone. So when the screw-ups we had, well, we’re not a zone team, but we’re going to have to play some zone. I don’t know if De’Aaron will be ready for Friday. He may not. Sacha (Killeya-Jones) also had to leave, so they’re out. Mychal (Mulder)’s out. I’m thinking about getting out.

So, you know, what I liked was Isaiah Briscoe’s leadership. You know, he made some plays that I said, why would you do that? But I thought Dom (Hawkins) getting that charge, that lay-up he made, he missed some shots, but he did those. That was big. I thought Wenyen did great stuff on the backboard rebounding and second shots, and Derek didn’t make shots, but I thought he fought. He rebounded some balls. Then Bam (Adebayo) just got in foul trouble again.

I thought Tai Wynyard was good today. The one thing you get with Tai, he’s going to mix it up. He’s going to be physical. He’s going to push on people. The problem is he pushed on the one where we made the three and hadn’t even shot the ball and he’s pushing the guy out of bounds. But we need that on this team. We need a little more toughness.

Then I talked toughness in the last couple huddles. That means make your free throws. You can’t miss 0 for 2. You can’t do a foot kicker. That’s not tough. And the kid listened, and all of a sudden the last part, he’s making free throws, he’s taking tough shots. I mean, toughness isn’t just pushing people. It’s making tough plays (with) four minutes to go, three minutes to go.

Their inside people hurt us. I thought (Yante) Maten was what, 25 points. (Derek) Ogbeide, he’s a double-double. That hurt us. He had a double-double, and partly because we went smaller. We were trying to go Bam on him. And (J.J.) Frazier played good, again. I mean, five assists, 23 points. You know, 3-for-4 from the three-point line, made big baskets.

I mean, Georgia, this is, as much it’s it is like, wow, you know, you understand. You watched the game. We were down 14, and we were lucky to be in a tie ballgame playing a zone that we never play. Come on. So I give my hat’s off to Mark (Fox). They came in and did a heck of a job, and our kid goes crazy in the second half. Goes for 30.

COACH CALIPARI: Well, what did you think? How did that start go? It wasn’t really good, was it? So obviously that won’t be how we start. We’ll just have to figure it out. I mean, we’re going to Florida this weekend. You cannot play them zone because they’ve got too many three-point shooters. They’ve got like three on the floor. So you can throw a zone a little bit, but if you’re thinking you’re going to go in there and play zone and win on the road, you won’t believe this. It’s (ESPN College) GameDay too down there. Would you expect anything different? I mean, so, we’ve got a tough road ahead of us.

COACH CALIPARI: Well, the thing I told them after, the teams that I really enjoyed coaching will shoot 35 percent and still win a game because they’ll grind it, because they’re tough mentally. They’re tough. They’ll come up with balls physically. They’re not going to turn it over late. They’re going to make all the plays they have to make late to win.

This team, for the first time this year, did it. We did it. And again, the execution, there were a couple breakdowns. Dom a couple times, Wenyen and I said, ‘Hey, man, we’re going to this way to finish it out.’ But the reality of it is, guys played pretty good.

COACH CALIPARI: Better, better today. I will tell you, he had six turnovers. What I’m saying, and what was bothering me, you guys know if you watch us, one more is a big term for us. If you’re open, you’re screaming it, one more. We put him in the middle of the zone so you can scream one more and he can find you. We had no one speaking, so now he’s going like I must be open to the rim because no one’s open.

But putting him in the middle, putting him in some pick-and-rolls, I was happy that making free throws, he missed a couple. But, you know, he was getting fouled going to the rim, and we just said, let’s put him in ball screens. Let’s get him to the rim. Let’s spread this court out. People didn’t want to leave Malik.

What we did for Malik is we just put him on the baseline and said we’re going to find you. You make shots, make plays, so that’s how we did the second half and stuck with it until they went man-to-man, and then we did some other stuff. But it was pretty good.

COACH CALIPARI: He’s also sick. He’s also sick. So he got sick prior to the game. The other kid (De’Aaron) got sick yesterday. You know, this flu that’s going around, we’re trying to sanitize and do some stuff to make sure it doesn’t go through the whole team.

COACH CALIPARI: He’s out there. He went on the treadmill today, which I watched him. But I’d have to talk to the trainers and stuff, so I don’t really know. But my guess would be inside of ten days, maybe a week. And obviously, he’s one more weapon for us. You know, we ended up playing six guys, and then I threw Tai and Isaac (Humphries) in there a little bit. And then Bam gets in foul trouble and then I was playing six guys. Think about that. That’s why Isaiah played 45 minutes and Malik played 44.

But what I told them today, when I was at UMass I had two guards that I played 39 minutes a game. They played 39 minutes, and we pressured. They knew not to foul. Don’t foul. I can’t leave you in the game if you go body to body or stop playing or go reach in. They just were disciplined enough, Edgar Padilla, Carmelo Travieso, look it up. Jerry will look it up. 39 minutes a game they played. And I’m saying to these guys, as long as you don’t foul, I can leave you in games.

COACH CALIPARI: We tried, but we trapped out on the court a couple times, that gave the basket open. We let them out of a trap on the baseline, Bam did, and he went baseline and walked and then got fouled and made one. But he got outside of us.

I thought they did a good job late of making it hard for him because Maten’s one of the best guys in our league. He’s physical, his jump hook and now he’s added a three-point shot to his game, so you’ve got to play him out on the court now.

But their other big kid, Derek he was good too now. He jump hooked us, and played and cut where he should have. And he’s the one that got 13 rebounds. He was pretty good.

COACH CALIPARI: Well, I told him a couple times, if you don’t tell these guys, I will, and I don’t want to do it. I want to coach less and have you do more. I want to do less, you guys do more. And I can’t do it because you can’t just let guys do their thing. You’ve got to tell them. The guy’s not doing what we’re asking. You tell him. Make him listen.

We went in the zone and he was on guys because we told him exactly where to slide and the guy stayed low and gave up the three, and he went over and ran right up to him and said, hey, man, now that’s good for me because it’s less that I have to do.

I want to be a cheerleader. I’m like having to coach every possession. It’s really hard. I’d rather sit there like last year and watch Tyler (Ulis) move people around. I mean, I’m trying to tell them, each game it’s got to be more about them and less about me, and I’ve got to try to be as positive as I can. There are sometimes you just can’t. I don’t care what you say, just there’s no way, but I’m trying.

It’s now February, I’ve got to be more positive. Is it? It’s February.

On how he thinks Kentucky won …

“Just coming together. Just being close and staying with each other. Just fighting.”

“Just confidence and believing in myself. My teammates believed in me, and I knocked down some big free throws.” 

“I want to be out there fighting with my brothers. The game goes the way it goes.”

“It just proves we’ve got to fight and that we’re not backing out from anybody.”

“I think Tai did well. I love him to death. He played good. He played great and he gave us good minutes.” 

 

“ It was great defense. The best we could play. We ran through that play a lot at practice and worked on it everyday so I was able to lock down the shot.”

 

“ Isaiah was way too aggressive than he was in the first half and I was able to feed off of his energy and everything that he was doing and knock down the shots he was giving me.”

 

“ We knew he wasn’t going to play, but the game plan was still the same. We planned to play the way we played with or without him and fortunately we were able to execute.”

 

“ I was pretty hard, but we worked on it for the past two days and we just adjusted to it.”

 

“Our energy was just low. We just had to bring it out and I think that happened when there were eight minutes left and we started making runs and basically started executing.”

 

“Absolutely. Before the game, on his notes, he added new ones saying ‘more of y’all and less of me’. Meaning he wanted the players to coach each other and let him take a step back. Today, before the game, Kenny (Payne) said, ‘Every time somebody shoots a free throw, go over and control the team’, and I did just that. It helped me with the flow of the game, and I felt more comfortable out on the court talking back and fourth with coach. I had to do what I had to do.”

 

“When things get tight, everybody looks at me as the leader. I kept a positive attitude, and let everyone else around me know that we’re still in this game, it’s early. Basketball is a game of runs and everyone is going to go on a run. We weren’t expecting the 12-0 start, but we kept fighting and ended up winning in overtime.”

 

“I feel like I’m shooting the three’s too. I swear, when it gets down to the guts of the game and he has that look in his eye, he says, ‘Yo Zay,, come on bro, get me the ball, get me open’, as the point guard, as the leader. I want him to score because I know he’s good for it towards the end of the game. I just kept finding him and he caught fire.”

“I thought it was a really good, hard fought college basketball game. I have to give Kentucky’s team credit for competing their tails off and making big plays. Monk, you have to give him credit. He made some guarded shots and he obviously was the big difference in the game. Give him credit because that was an outstanding performance by him.”

“We held him to one basket, I think, in the first half and we gave him some free throws, which I thought, in the first half, we gave him some free throws in transition that might get him started. He just got rolling. So we tried some different things. You have to give a great player credit. I’m not faulting our team. Our team competed hard. Their kids made more plays tonight then we did and they made enough to win.”

“I don’t think they scored. We had a great crowd and it lifts up their team but I don’t think they scored. We have great respect for their fan base. What impacted the game the most was Malik Monk shooting the ball in. We didn’t rebound great in the first half. Kentucky did a lot of things to win the game, as we did too. They do have a great crowd but I think the biggest factor is the players.”

“He (Monk) shot it over a big, athletic guy and I thought we defended it pretty well. He made a contested shot. Again, let’s give him credit.”

“We have respect for him. He’s a great player. You saw how he played against Carolina. We knew, obviously, he might be super aggressive with the other kid out, and we talked about that with our team before the game. I thought in the first half we did a good job of containing him. The second half we just couldn’t find an answer.”

“Well I did think that, for a minute, it kept the ball away from Yante Maten, but we anticipated some zone. They zoned us a little bit in the tournament last year. We were prepared to see a little bit of zone but we got off to such a great start and we made our first five or six shots. You know that’s not going to last forever. That zone changed the tempo enough to get them back in the game.”

I was real proud of our team and how they competed today. Some nights you can play your tail off and when the other kid makes the plays that they made you gotta say, ‘give their kid credit’ throw him good ballgame and move on. I was proud of how our team competed. They gave us a chance to win, and he just made the last shot to get it to OT.”