The UK men’s basketball team doesn’t play again until Saturday when the Cats host Georgia. With an open date and Georgia next on the schedule, head coach John Calipari appeared on the Southeastern Conference coaches’ teleconference to discuss what his team will be doing this week and the upcoming game with Georgia.

• Calipari said Georgia just flat out beat them in the game a couple of weeks ago in Athens, Ga. “They player rougher than us,” Calipari said. “They played physical. They were good. From (Trey) Thompkins to their guard play to their physical defense, we couldn’t drive the ball and get a clean look. We weren’t playing through bumps. They manhandled us.”
• Early in the season, Calipari said freshman guard Terrence Jones had the capability of being the best player in the country and Jones said he came to UK to be coached by Calipari and learn from him. Calipari was asked how Jones has responded to his coaching. “He’s a great kid,” Calipari said. “There are times I just look at him and I go, ‘I love you, you know.’ And he goes, ‘I know, and I love you, too.’ He is the greatest kid. He’s young. He doesn’t play with the kind of desire and fight that he needs to the whole game. When he does play that way, people look at him and say, ‘Wow.’ My job is to get him to play that way the whole time and have that mentality.”
• Jones isn’t the only player that Calipari wants more from. Calipari said he doesn’t believe Darius Miller is “scratching” where he needs to be, DeAndre Liggins isn’t playing well offensively, Doron Lamb isn’t playing with the type of motor he should be and Brandon Knight doesn’t run the team the way he’s capable of. The fact that Calipari isn’t satisfied with their play is a good thing, he said. “I can go up and down this team and tell you this team’s upside is enormous because individual players are playing 50, 60 percent capable of what they’re doing and they’re doing everything in spurts,” Calipari said.
• With the week off, Calipari said they’ll do a few things differently. They’ll work a little bit on their press, execution and situational things. “Situational things, probably more than any team I’ve coached in the last five years, this team needs it,” Calipari said. “You would think they know this is a situation, we’ve got to get a great shot or get fouled. We don’t know that right now. We’re just taking a play. ‘It’s my turn,’ or ‘I’m going to take a hero 3.'”
• “Hero” play was a term that came up a lot with last year’s team. John Wall repeatedly used to stress the importance of not making those “hero” plays. Calipari was asked if he considered Jones’ driving, one-hand flush on Sam Muldrow midway through the first half was one of those. “No,” Calipari said. “A hero’s play is you shoot a 3 or you fade away; a shot you have little chance at making. That’s a hero’s play. If you go at the basket and you try to dunk on somebody, that’s what I want to see.”
• Georgia head coach Mark Fox was briefly asked about Kentucky. With Florida coming up Tuesday, the Gators are Fox’s primary focus for now, but Fox didn’t sound like he’ll change much of the game plan after the Bulldogs handed Kentucky a 77-70 loss in Stegeman Coliseum. “I can’t tell you I’ve really decided yet (on how we’ll attack Kentucky),” Fox said. “We’re so focused on the next game. We did play well here against Kentucky. It was their first road game in the league and we played well. We had the advantage of the home crowd and everything else in our favor. I think when we go over there, (it’s important) that we understand that we’ll have to play mistake free. As we get deeper in the week, we’ll make some decisions on how we want to play and look back on how we played the first time.”