Q. How good was Wenyen Gabriel tonight?

COACH CALIPARI: I told him, I said, you’re a double-double if you make a free throw. Just make some free throws and you’re a double-double. And you know, it’s going to be a process for a bunch of these kids. I thought Isaac (Humphries) showed some signs.

But Auburn, I thought played well. I thought they spread the court. They did what I thought they would do, which is move the ball a little bit before they tried to drive it.

Look, they had Georgia down 16 and they had Mississippi down 14. Those are two of their losses, and those are like in the second half. He gets his big kid back, I think they are fine. They are aggressive. They are not afraid.

You know, for us, the foul trouble, trying to juggle, and I think I said after the game, now you know why I do not put guys in in the first half with two fouls. You can’t end the game without guards. So, you just, if you want to foul and be undisciplined with the kind of fouls you’re making where you’re pushing up and body-checking guys, you can’t be in the game.

Q. I was curious, is there anything special going on with the fouls? That’s two games in a row the backcourt has been in big foul trouble.

COACH CALIPARI: I have to look at it. I just think we get, again, a guy drives it, you’ve got to give ground. We work every day on giving ground and staying wide so you can stay in front of people so you don’t just open the gate.

We had some guys that just, they do, and they open the gate and the guy drives right to the rim, straight line drive.

It’s what we call, ‘one-mores.’ It’s that extra pass. It came to the guy. He had no one on him and is yelling one more. And this guy ball-fakes and walks, and this guy catches it and tries to throw it to the guy inside and throws it away.

I mean, it was just undisciplined. The play where Isaiah (Briscoe) got his fourth foul, stop, we’re grinding him, and he hands it off and gets a fourth foul. Why did you do that? Undisciplined.

And again, I had to fight them the whole game. I don’t enjoy coaching the way I coached today. I should be a cheerleader. Obviously they are not ready for that.

And what bothered me in the second half, as they made their run, I had to make a call every time down the floor. That’s not how you want to coach. You’re not going to be that team, if you have to – and if I have to do that, I will. But at some point, this team’s got to be empowered, and they are just – they are not ready.

Q. Very little Derek Willis, very little Isaac Humphries, no Sacha Killeya-Jones today. Are you shortening up your lineup or is it a matchup thing?

COACH CALIPARI: Well, Bam (Adebayo) should be able to play every minute he can play. That’s how good he is. Just how it is. I thought Isaac did good in his minutes. I think your choice is between Isaac and Sacha, and right now in practice, Isaac is doing better. That’s why we’re playing him.

I think in the case of Derek and Wenyen, it’s who is playing better. And if you watched, Derek made some shots, but struggled guarding. And Wenyen was getting every rebound. You know, that’s the great thing about what I do. It’s not brain surgery.

It’s just, you watch – now my daughter, Dr. Calipari, is a neuro – in the neuroscience, that’s studying the brain. She is. I am not.

Q. With all the extra time with Camp Cal, why do you think there are still free throw shooting struggles?

COACH CALIPARI: It’s contagious. We were in there arguing who missed the first couple. I said, first of all, Isaiah. Briscoe said it was Wenyen. I said it wasn’t Wenyen. Someone missed before Wenyen, and I think it was Bam, and then Bam was saying it was somebody else. But what happens is you see a guy miss, and now you’re going to the line saying, ‘Geez, I can’t miss.”

Anybody a golfer? Okay. You stand over the ball: ‘I’m not going to slice, I’m not going to slice.’ You’re slicing, oh, yeah. That ball is sliiiiccing. Basketball is that way.

Now, here is the other thing, Jerry. How do you shoot better from the three-point line than you do the free-throw line? What’s your answer? You have all the answers. Give me an answer. That was Camp Cal, how about that. It is what it is. I mean, I look at this team, what I don’t want to have to do, is battle. Me battling my team to play more disciplined, to do all the things we’re working on and talking about in practice, do them in the games and let’s do them for 40 minutes, and let’s see how good we are.

You can’t – here is what happens. Whether you’re undisciplined on offense or defense, they don’t. The team won’t trust each other enough to be special. Because you’re not disciplined, they don’t trust you’re going to do what you’re supposed to do. There’s a breakdown in trust. Now all of a sudden, everybody plays their own man and plays for themselves.

Again, not brain surgery, not psychology. It’s just what it is. So until you get a team that plays with great discipline, they are not going to trust each other enough to get to be a special team.

We, at times, play with unbelievable discipline, and all of a sudden we just do our own thing. Shoot a ball with 22 seconds left in the shot clock, with two guys on us and I’ll fade kick it. What? Why would you do that? I mean, drive the ball. Try to get fouled. ‘Well, I thought’ – no. Just undisciplined.

Those are the things that we have to work on and I think it’s going to take time. I still think we’re a month away to being what we need this thing to be if we’re going to be one of those teams at the end, because we’re not there right now.

Q. Kind of a follow-up question as far as the shooting. You’ve shot 67 percent of the first half from downtown and 60 percent for the game. Can you talk about how well you did shooting game from downtown?

COACH CALIPARI: Oh, you mean the three-point line?

Q. Yes, sir.

COACH CALIPARI: We have guys, Mychal Mulder, shooting a high percentage. What they were doing, if you watched, some of you might not watch, but when they throw it in the post, they were bringing everybody in, which means when you threw it out, you were getting threes.

So they were saying, we’re not letting Bam dunk on us. Now at the end of the game, they didn’t do that and that’s when Bam was dunking and going crazy. So you have to – what are you going to give up? But that was part of it. They made a choice, you know, like the biggest three of the game, which one was it? Isaiah Briscoe makes that three – it’s a four-point game and he makes a three – and then we go on a run.

But they switched. They rotated and left him open. They did it on purpose. Probably a good move. Just not on that one. And he made it. I mean, so when you say that, they were trying to say, what’s the best way to give us a chance to win, and you have to give them credit. They did. I mean, it’s a four-point game. I don’t know how much time was left but it was a four-point game. I looked up and I just like, you know.

Q. Along the same lines, six-point game, eight minutes left and you lose De’Aaron, what did your team show you with the way they closed it out?

COACH CALIPARI: Well, I had to take Isaiah out, because what my fear was: Okay, he gets one, and there’s five and a half minutes to go in the game and they just start pressing all over the place. Now I don’t have any guards.

So, now I have Dom (Hawkins) and Mychal, who are good guards, but they are not, you know, they are not going to go through a double-team. So that’s why I put Dom in and put I sigh and I said, I’m going to put you in at the three, under three, under four time-outs, three-something, and he finished the game off.

But I thought Dom played well at point. I thought Mychal played well. That’s as good as Mychal has played and it’s good, because we need that, like in this kind of game. I mean, we didn’t do a great job of guarding them either now. They were shooting straight-line layups off pick-and-rolls. And the (T.J.) Dunans kid , he goes 10 for 20 and literally one was a three. No, two were threes, and every other one was a lay-up, like a straight-line layup. You’re sitting and I’m like shaking my head. Played well.

Q. Bruce Pearl was complimentary of you and the job you did at UMass, but the phrase was ‘pissed off’; that he hopes you were pissed off that they beat you last year.

COACH CALIPARI: Did they beat us last year? (Laughter).

Oh, they did? Oh. Yeah, I’m pissed off they beat us last year (laughter). Look, guys, I’m going to say it again. I’ll literally, I’ll fight during the game, I know officials take – I don’t take it personal. I don’t care. Now some of the officials, they are going to get mad. I don’t even know their names. I’m just coaching my team trying to help them win. I don’t want to fight my team the whole game, which I did today.

The other coach, I’m not – look, good for him. I hope he does well. I’m not – I don’t take it personal. If I did, any time I lost, I would give the other guy no credit. I’d be mad. Hey, he did good. He coached. Like today, Bruce did a hell of a job to keep his team in this game. We’re a good team and they had a chance to beat us. Did a heck of a job. But he lost.

Now, is he pissed? (Laughter).

Q. You were talking about Dunans getting to the bucket and Bruce was saying they are playing like a lot of teams, pull your bigs away –

COACH CALIPARI: Not our bigs.

Q. That’s what he said.

COACH CALIPARI: Pull Bam away?

Q. Yeah.

COACH CALIPARI: That was to get that kid the drive against which player?

Q. Bam —

COACH CALIPARI: Yeah. Say it – it wasn’t pull everybody. No. Give it to him. Space the court. Now you beat him on the dribble.

Q. You were talking about the trust issues on defense. Well, how does it fit into that scenario?

COACH CALIPARI: They have got to get better. Understand, every team is doing the same thing to us. This is not hard. If you can’t move your feet and stay in front of everybody, either I have to play a zone or you can’t play. It’s, you know, that’s why I want Mychal, we went small lineup. Let Mychal try to stay in front then.

At the end of the day, if we’re going to be anything, it will be because we’re a terrific defensive team. We’re not there yet. We’re just not. But like I said, it’s a great win. These kids are trying. I love the chatter in the locker room. They were talking and you know, when kids are excited, they chatter. So you had just everybody in there talking and it was – then they talk louder and I’m in my office and I can hear them in there. That’s what I want to hear. I want to hear that at dinner. You know, it means they care about one another. They like each other. There’s some emotion between them.

How about having all these guys and they are playing for each other. And you’re talking, like Malik (Monk), Isaiah, Bam, De’Aaron, even Wenyen and Derek. They are all playing for each other. They are not playing to get theirs.

And it’s fun for me, and look I said, I’ve just got to get them to where they are more disciplined and where they are more empowered so I can kind of coach a game relaxed. Like I was literally fighting them on and having to call the plays and stop them and come on. I just want to sit there and enjoy the game like everybody else.

Q. Bruce also took us back to when you were at Memphis and he was at Tennessee, and coming forward, he said that he likes to think that the things he doesn’t like about you are the things you don’t like about him. What is it about you two that’s so unlikable? (Laughter).

COACH CALIPARI: (Smiling). Why would he think I don’t like him? You guys, it doesn’t matter what I say. It will be, ‘Here is what he meant,’ You guys read my mind.

Look, he is – it’s funny, because the styles are totally different. They do stuff on the baseline out-of-bounds, on the side out-of-bounds. They will do different things in how they play, and we are playing a totally different way in what we are trying to do. We had some great games.

I don’t think we ever played when I was at UMass. I don’t believe so. We had some great games for a while when he was at Tennessee and I was at Memphis. We beat him. He beat us. Does anybody know the record? I could care less, or nor do I know. I would guess that we’ve won more than he’s won. That’s my guess – It was a joke. (Laughter).

But you know, it’s like I said. You’re competing in a league. You’re trying to do your best and you’re going against guys, but I have no problem with Bruce. He’s doing a good job.

On this being his best game of the year…

“Yeah, I feel like I played pretty well – fighting hard. A lot of opportunity to perform is what I think it is mostly, but I was happy with how I played.”

On the timeout after De’Aaron Fox fouled out…

“In that time of the game, it is just time to win. We lose De’Aaron to five fouls and that is something that we are going to have to deal with once in awhile. But, you know, we still have a lot of guys and guards who create plays and finish at the rim and play hard defense. So, you know, it was winning time from there on out and we just tried to push the lead as much as we could.” 

On shooting from distance…

“We shot pretty well. None of us really said anything. I feel that we see each other shoot the ball well everyday. So, we expect the work we put in, we expect to reap the rewards from that.” 

On 3-point percentage being higher than the free-throw percentage…

“I bet it was. You know, for some reason, we are kind of up and down with the free throws, but that is something we will continue to work on. I know these guys are really willing to keep working hard and get better in that area. So, that is something that shouldn’t be a problem much longer.” 

On why they got so much energy when Fox fouled out…

“We had to pick up the energy because we lost a very important player. The team came together and we played even harder because we had to make up for the what we were losing defensively and offensively.”

On Cal saying he doesn’t like coaching when he has to fight to get the team to do what he wants them to do…

“That just comes with discipline. We are a young team and today we weren’t disciplined enough. But, we will keep working on that with more games during the season.” 

On how Wenyen Gabriel has been playing…

“Wenyen is a great player, and he just had a massive game today. He had 16 rebounds and the balls were going his way. We applaud him for it and hope he can keep doing this going forward.” 

On free-throw shooting… 

“When you’re the first person to go to the line, you’re supposed to make both of them and I missed both of them. So we are going to get in the gym, work on our free-throws and come back better.”

On the progress he has made over the last month …

“I think I’m about to start taking big strides now. I’ve been building my confidence, and defensively I’ve been focused on defensive rebounding lately.”

On how his early 3-pointers boosted his confidence …

“I think that had a lot to do with it. I have had confidence issues lately, but coming back and those two 3’s showed it with the rebounds tonight.”

On how well it felt to start shooting well early …

“It felt good. It kind of felt like I am going back to how I was, how I was playing in high school. My confidence is coming back and I’m about to start playing more aggressive.”

 

On what brought back his confidence …

“I mean I think seeing those two shots fall early and getting those rebounds tonight, teammates sharing the ball more, and just practicing everyday and getting better.” 

Opening statement…

“Kentucky is a great team and they play really well together. They’re tremendous in transition and they just keep getting better and play well together. We fouled them too much, and they got in the bonus in the second half in five minutes. It was going to be very difficult to win that game no matter how close we got it in the second half. We fouled them 31 times, and they fouled us 18 times. Those are errors. Now, they force you to do some of that because they’re so big and they attack very well. You can’t miss ten free throws and expect to make a run and put a scare into them. We challenged them in some ways, but we really never threatened them.” 

On the mentality of his team entering the game …

“You can’t extend too much and you’ve got to make them make some jump shots. They made eight threes in the first half that I didn’t think they’d make. Eight more and that would be down to three, so if we could have them down to three in the first half and three in the second half then we would have had a fighting chance. You’ve got to build a wall, and you’ve got to show a lot of help on Bam [Adebayo]. The other thing too is how we guard the ball screen. If you go over the top, then he rolls down and he’s free to throw it up to the rim. We did a pretty good job at taking that away. That’s the beauty of their team. They take what the defense gives you, and that’s what Kentucky did.” 

On the relationship between him and Coach Calipari…

“For a long, long time, one of the greatest jobs in the history of college basketball is what John Calipari did at UMass. I’ve said it for a long time. I grew up in Boston and I went to Boston College. I was there and I left when I was 22 years old. I know what UMass basketball was, I know what he made it, and I know what it has been since he left. He doesn’t get nearly enough credit for that. When he went to Memphis, he was at a place, and it’s hard to believe this. I was at the big school. I was at Tennessee, and Memphis was a smaller school in a corner. They hated Tennessee, and that was the beginning of John and I having a bit of a rivalry. I’d like to think that the things he doesn’t like about me are some of the things I don’t like about him, but I had great respect for him. I always have. When you have respect for a coach like that, and I do, you have to challenge John. I want him to have to prepare to play Auburn. I want him to be pissed off that we beat them last year. They weren’t a great team and we made some shots and made some plays. It was a tough place to play and it matters if you can beat John Calipari at Kentucky. You do want to earn the respect of them here because you respect him.” 

On the offense during the game…

“The only way we could score was to bring their bigs underneath the basket, set ball screens, and drive it down the hill. That wasn’t very pretty, and it doesn’t require a lot of passing. It’s just T.J. Dunans or Jared Harper, guys who’s not very striving downhill in scoring space. Whether it was years ago when I coached against Ohio State and Greg Oden, or when I’ve coached against Kentucky’s bigs. We’ve always done it. It doesn’t take a rocket scientist to figure out that the farther I get Bam away from the basket the better fighting chance we have. He beat down a lot of balls and they’re going to see that all year long because they’re so good defensively. We thought we could turn a corner. We made some tough twos, they blocked some shots. We made nine threes and we probably should have made thirteen or fourteen.  I didn’t think that once our guys got downhill kicked it out enough to compliment getting to the rim, but I thought we would get it to the rim.” 

On if they were trying to make Kentucky take the outside shots…

“That was the game plan. We knew they were better at twos then threes. So, we were just trying to make them shoot and they were just hitting shots.”

On what was working for Auburn offensively during the game …

“I had a mismatch the whole game. They put a four-man on me, so I was just trying to go downhill.”

On the offensive game plan…

 “We had the same game plan coming in: To just be aggressive on offense and take shots or kick the ball out.” 

 

On single-handedly taking the game from a 16- to a 6-point game with 12 minutes left…

 “Coach Pearl told me to just go out, play and keep attacking. Either take the shot or get the foul on one of my teammates. They were letting me go downhill, so I was just trying to attack.”