John Calipari joined the Southeastern Conference Coaches’ Teleconference on Monday to revisit the first week of conference play and look ahead to a Tuesday matchup with Missouri. Check out everything he had to say, as well as quotes from Missouri’s Kim Anderson.CalipariOn this week’s games …“I think both teams are playing well. Missouri had a great win at home (against LSU) and really played well on the road and obviously Alabama is doing what they always do. They’re playing great defense and holding people to low numbers and playing a physical game. They’ll be two hard games for us.”On what Devin Booker has provided …“Well, you know what was great for him last game: It’s the first time he has been in late and he really performed. He attacked, he didn’t settle for jumpers, made his free throws. Broke down defensively, but we all did in that game, the last one. But we wouldn’t have been in the game if he didn’t make shots in the first half.”On the value of playing two close games …“Well, I’ve said all along that you don’t want to go through a season where you’re never in a close game because you don’t learn about your team. You need to be down 10 or 12 and see how you respond and you need to be in overtime games where they need to really lock down and be efficient offensively and make free throws or create good shots. Some eyes were opened. Trey Lyles making free throws. Dakari (Johnson) making free throws and coming up with huge rebounds. You know, the way Devin played down the stretch really showed some things. But enough is enough. We had enough of these games now. Let’s get some games that are a little bit easier for us, but I don’t think we’ll have any. I think every game we play is someone’s Super Bowl. They’re going to play out of their minds. The kid from Mississippi had cramps and says that you can’t have cramps, not at the biggest moment of your life. Like, what? The biggest moment of your life? But that’s how guys feel playing against us and that’s what I’m trying to tell our team. If you don’t play with desperation and they do, you’re losing.”On whether his team was affected by the unbeaten talk …“No, but one of the things we’re addressing today – and I just got done with individual meetings and we’re going to have a great team meeting here in a little bit after I’m done and show a little tape and come back this afternoon and practice – but have we lost our edge? Have we lost our swagger? Have we lost a little bit of our focus? And then if we have, what was it? What was our swag about? What was our focus about? What was our edge? What gave us an edge? And then the question becomes, how do we get it back? If we lost it, what were reasons we could have lost it? And it’s not like we’re totally–we’re still winning tough games and we’re fighting like crazy. It’s just that we’re not exactly where we were and it’s all good because I don’t want us to be like it’s March right now. It’s too early to be like it’s March. It isn’t. One of the things we talked about: Are individuals feeling something they shouldn’t be feeling? So we got a lot of things working. And it’s crazy. Every team right now has issues in the country. Every team. Every team’s working through something. All I’ll tell you is I’m happy I’m coaching this team. I believe I have the best team in the country with the best players. So we got some things to figure out. We’ll do it together.”On moving Tyler Ulis to the blue platoon …“No. No, we’re still, I’m good. The thing I would tell all of our guys – and what we talked about today – I believe in all of them. Now, if there’s any reason you’re not thinking right, because they’re all talented. The things we’re asking them to do, they can do. But, no. We have a good group of kids, man. I’m telling you, great kids. They’ve all stepped up at different times. They’ve all played bad at times, yet the team covered for them. It was like the game vs. Mississippi. I couldn’t have Tyler in at the end if we wanted to win the game. He couldn’t be in. I think everybody is watching spots of this, spots of that, I’m watching the full body of work. I’m fine with where our team is.”On the Missouri Tigers …“They lost a lot. You would think they wouldn’t be this confident, but their big man is playing well. Their wings are competing, their guards are playing great in pick-and-rolls and doing things they have to do. They’re excited about league play. You can see the fight they have. They’re not surrendering, they don’t have it in their bones. They’re just going to play. It’s going to be a tough opponent for us.”Missouri head coach Kim AndersonOpening statement …“Good morning. We had a much needed win on (Thursday) against LSU. Obviously, a quality win for us and something we had struggled early on – we have played better lately – especially against some good teams, Illinois, Oklahoma State, we weren’t able to get over the hump. Then in this game we were able to execute and should have probably won the game in regulation, (Keith) Hornsby makes a great shot for LSU. We miss a good shot to win it in regulation, and then go into overtime. I was really proud of our guys. We have been in this situation a couple times, and as I said earlier, we haven’t been able to get over the hump. We got over it against LSU. “Then the other night when we played Auburn; great game. I thought we started off pretty well. We handled the ball pretty well against them. We made some shots and they had a great performance from (Cinmeon) Bowers. They shot the ball better from 3 than they had been, which was something that we obviously didn’t plan on. Then they did a great job of rebounding. Bowers I think was a force, especially at the end of the game. He made some plays, got some boards for them. (Jordon) Granger hits a big 3 there right down the stretch that basically put them out of reach a little bit. “I think we remain a team still trying to find itself completely, but we’ve gotten a lot better. Our young guys are playing better. They’re playing with more confidence, and the LSU game gave us that confidence – gave us some confidence. Hopefully we can carry that over now through the rest of the season. “We know we have a tremendously tough game tomorrow night against Kentucky, the best team in the country. I’m hopeful that what we have learned here in the past week in the SEC will carry over and we can play well.”On facing Kentucky with UK coming off a couple close games …“Well, I wish they hadn’t had a couple of close games to be quite candid with you. But I think that what we face is certainly a team that has so many different weapons. They’re very deep, they’re big, they’re long. The thing that most impresses me about Kentucky, other than all the things I just said, is when they don’t play great, they still find ways to win. They did that Saturday against (Texas) A&M. That’s the most impressive thing to me about Kentucky. We all know they have good players and they’re very well coached and they have a great fanbase. Going through the league undefeated takes – it was a long time ago when it happened here. I think other than the skill and the talent, it takes a little bit of luck. I can remember in the situation we had here at Missouri in ’94 maybe it was, Eric Piatkowski shot a ball – it was a game to go to 14-0. He shot a ball and to this day I swear the ball was in and somebody punched it out of the net. So, it takes some luck, but they’re so well coached and they’re so good that the most impressive thing for me is they find ways to win even when they’re not playing great.”On the play of Keanau Post and the challenge of facing UK’s bigs …“Well Keanau has found himself a little bit. And I think the thing with this whole team has been that we’re trying to–we’ve got young guys and we’re trying to build this program and the confidence level I think was something that was lacking. And Keanau, we put him in–he didn’t play for a couple of games and not because he’d done anything wrong. It just was a production thing. Put him against Lipscomb the other night and they had a big guy – 6-10 or whatever he was, 300-some pounds – and Keanau did a great job on him and was also able to score some buckets. That carried over to the LSU game. Again, a team with great size. So maybe–in my mind he’s gained some confidence. The other night against Auburn, he played all right. He wasn’t great. He wasn’t bad. Ryan Rosburg gave us some good minutes. So against Kentucky, we obviously need him. We need Rosburg. We need everybody that we have to play maybe above the level that they normally play because the thing that Kentucky does so good is, other than execute, they do so such a great job rebounding and we will be undersized no matter who we put out there. So to me a huge key to this game is us being able to compete on the boards and keep them from just getting a ton of second shots and certainly Keanau, Ryan and all of our front-line guys gotta figure into that.”On whether there is an update on Montaque Gill-Caesar …“He will not play. He will not play. No.”On how to attack this UK defense and whether there are areas where they are vulnerable …“No. I think what we have to do is – and we did not do a great job of this against Auburn – is that we have to do a better job of executing. I thought against Auburn a couple times we called a play or we were going to run a set and we didn’t get to the right spot and we got four guys running it and one guy not. Your margin for error against Kentucky is so slim that you gotta be on top of your game on both ends of the floor. But from an offensive standpoint, certainly their size presents a problem for us. We’ve got some ideas. There are some things we’re going to do, but it’s gonna come down to making shots. And that seems like a very simple statement, but it’s gonna come down to making perimeter shots if we can get good perimeter shots. Maybe trying to extend their bigs out on the floor a little bit so we can get to the basket. But they’re so long. They have a great capability to block shots. I just want to go in there and play, play hard, kind of see where we stack up and see where it takes us.”On whether Ole Miss and Texas A&M’s close games vs. UK are encouraging …“I think the thing–you watch them play Ole Miss and you watch them play A&M, both of those teams played exceptional games. Both of them had great performances from guards. I know (Danuel) House played well from A&M and I know Mississippi’s guy played great. So I think in order to beat them, you’re going to have to have somebody have a special game. If anything, they’ve been challenged two games in a row, probably haven’t played their best game and they still won. And I think that says a lot about their team and about their program. So you can look it two ways. You can look at it like, well, you know, Ole Miss and A&M pushed them to the wire. Maybe we can too. Or Ole Miss and A&M pushed them to the wire and, uh oh, we’re going into Rupp Arena and they’re going to be upset and they’re going to really be ready to play. So I really don’t get into all that. I think it’s go down and play the game and try to execute better than we have and see if we can play better than we have in the last couple of games.”