University of Kentucky Basketball Media Conference
Tuesday, March 3, 2020
John Calipari
Men’s Media Conference
Tennessee – 81, Kentucky – 73
Q. How alarming, if at all, is it to have a late game performance like this, this close to post-season?
JOHN CALIPARI: Any time you’re up 17 and there’s whatever it was left, the game got physical and we couldn’t compete. It just got physical. We tried different ways to try to score and we just, we had nothing. Couldn’t throw it to the post. Tried to open up the court, wasn’t getting by people.
But give credit to Tennessee. They could have gone away down 17, but that’s Rick Barnes, I mean, he’s a terrific coach. He never wavered. He kept telling them. (John) Fulkerson killed us, obviously. We tried some different things. There was a couple where we were trying to trap, and guys didn’t go down. We’re like, Why didn’t you go? I mean, there was a lot of stuff, but, you know, you’re trying to win every game, but it’s crazy, you just don’t. And you have a dud like this, but don’t make it about us. This is about Tennessee and how they played. They played physical, they went at (John) Fulkerson, (John) Fulkerson caught every ball, we caught none in the post. He then scored 27, made his free throws. And they made some unbelievable shots, some threes when they needed to. They just kept coming. We had our chances. It was a couple minutes to go and it was anybody’s ball game.
Q. You’ve coached against (John) Fulkerson for three years now, how much different is he as a player than what you’ve seen before?
JOHN CALIPARI: He’s just gotten better and better. He works really hard he fights for everything and he has a way of getting that shot up and off, I mean, he does. And he scored on Nick (Richards), he scored on Nate (Sestina), he scored on EJ (Montgomery), we tried everybody. We tried trapping, we tried a lot of different things to slow him down, but he was a tough cover for us.
Q. What did you make of, I don’t know what was being said, but it looked like Ashton (Hagans) and Nick (Richards) several times down the stretch were kind of going at each other after plays.
JOHN CALIPARI: Neither one played particularly well, so probably telling each other, You’re not playing well, and neither are you, neither are you, neither are you.
Q. Did you have any concerns about body language there? It seemed like guys were slumped shoulders —
JOHN CALIPARI: Mine or theirs?
Q. Either.
JOHN CALIPARI: Yeah, look, you — we have been on a heck of a run. This team has done a lot of good stuff, and the one thing we worry about is if the game is going to be physical, like, Nick’s (Richards) getting, you know, then we have got to learn to play in these kinds of games. You have a lead — we came out of a timeout or I had to call one, we’re running a play to try to get something near that basket, we take a jump shot. Like, just shoot it. Like, What? And again, for all the guys, if you want that thing near that rim, just ask for it, we’ll throw it to you. So, it was total. I mean, again, you have a 17-point lead as a coach, you should win the game. Come on.
We got manhandled, I got manhandled. It was, this is one that, you know, I know I got to watch the tape. I’m not going to look forward to watching this tape, but you got to watch the tape. Now we got another tough one. We go to Florida.
Q. Along those lines there were a couple three rebounds that Tennessee got offensive rebounds, put backs late. Was that just an effort thing or what did you see there?
JOHN CALIPARI: Well, we fumbled, I think, two that were in our hands. And, again, when it gets physical, you’re not looking at the ball. You’re looking at who is hitting you. And I’m not saying there was a foul. I’m just saying you got to learn to play through that. And then when we did rotate, we didn’t, our guards didn’t crack down. There was a lot of breakdowns. I’ll have to watch the tape. And what I told them after, You got to learn from this, guys. You let go of one. You got to learn. And you got to take responsibility yourself and how you played. But they’re all tied to each other and I’ve said that all season. There’s two things: If we don’t play physical, we’re not going to win. We won’t advance. Second thing is, this team is tied to each other. So, when one or two of the guys don’t play well, it affects everybody. And here’s what I would say, playing well doesn’t mean you are shooting all the balls and making them. No, it means you’re fighting, you’re connected defensively, you’re coming up with loose balls and rebounds, you’re covering for each other, you’re talking. When we do that together, we’re a good defensive team, we’re a pretty good offensive team. When we don’t or a couple guys don’t play well, it’s a hard deal. I tell you the other guy that was pretty good was Keion (Brooks Jr). Keion did some good stuff. And one thing you do as a coach, you — normally when things are happening, you’ll go with guys that you know have been in those situations and have made those plays even though they’re struggling. You’re thinking they will bust through. Then when you had to do it over again, you would say, If I would have known this, I would have said I’m going with these two. But you don’t know that. You don’t know. The normal situation for me is I would go with the guys that got you there and hope they bust through and really, they didn’t. But let me say this, don’t take tonight’s — to come in this building and do what they did, Tennessee, come on now. To come in this building, be down 17 and come back and win? And I hate to tell you, win going away. Come on now. That means they beat us by 25 in 15 minutes. But they could have beat us by 50? I mean, that’s — give them credit.
Q. You guys have had several games this year where you had a 10-, 15-point lead and let teams back in but still won. Can your guys learn something different from not escaping that situation and having it actually come back on them?
JOHN CALIPARI: If you’re not willing to play physical, you’re not winning. You’re going to get in games and there’s going to be, they’re going to let it go. Now, you can, He’s pushing me, I don’t know what to tell you. The second thing is it’s the same coming off screens, going to the basket for layups, it’s physical. Can’t miss layups based on the fact that, Well, the guy came at me and bumped me. They didn’t. They made them. We missed them.
FastScripts Transcript by ASAP Sports
Kentucky Men’s Basketball Post Game Quotes
Rupp Arena – Lexington, KY
March 3, 2020
Head Coach Rick Barnes
On whether the plan was to continually go to John Fulkerson late in the game …
“That’s always our plan. It is, but they, I’ve seen John (Calipari)’s teams are going to try to take away what we do, and he was terrific tonight and all of our guys did something great. Every guy that played, but what he did is one of the great performances I’ve witnessed. And he’s been like that, really, it’s really, I go back, and I think about the time with Grant (Williams) and all those guys. They used to say, ‘Fulky, you’re better than all of us.’ And, the fact is, he had so much confidence tonight, but our guys were confident. Even when we were down, and I would walk into the timeout, they were talking to each other about ‘Hey we just can’t keep making those turnovers and mistakes that we’re making.’ And they were great at driving the ball and we really said, ‘Hey we’re going to get into those gaps and they’re going to have to make some jump shots.’ And we actually made some plays in the gap where we knocked it through, got out in transition and got some baskets like that and we tried to speed the tempo up some. But when we got into a dead ball situation, we knew we were going to play through Fulky.”
On what it meant to win in light of the recent tornado in Tennessee …
“Well, again, our thoughts and prayers go out to those that lost people in the devastation there. And I talked to my friend of mine in Cookesville today and I asked him, I said, ‘You know, we’re going to be coming through there next week for the tournament,’ I said, ‘What can we do?’ He said, ‘I’ll think about it,’ but he said, ‘In the meantime, the best thing you can do is beat the Wildcats.’ So, again, if that helps anybody but it’s so sad, what happened there, and again, actually, this is a game but that’s real-life tragedy and I’m just really sad for those people and I just know that we’ve got to keep them in our prayers.”
On the key for Josiah-Jordan James …
“Well I think one, he’s getting healthy for the first time. You know he’s fought that all year, you guys know that, but I do think that he feels the best he’s felt probably since July. And he’s dealt with some serious things where he’s tried to play through it then couldn’t and tried to get back in it, so I do think now, he’s somewhat getting a rhythm. But I think we’re getting a rhythm a little bit more as a team, because you know, with Santi[ago Vescovi] coming in, and he wasn’t terrific tonight but he came back late and made some things happen. Everybody that played, Jalen Johnson’s shots were huge early in the game. But when we were down and came back, everybody made something happen. But Josiah (-Jordan James), I mean, he’s just, he’s got that look. That he’s settled in and he knows what he needs to do and now he just needs to continue to build on it.”
On adversity this season ….
“Well one, I will tell you this, when Wisconsin came in our building and Lamonte (Turner) had decided he was going to quit, we lost because everything we had planned to work on up to that point … we had to fight injuries. Josiah (-Jordan James) had been hurt, and at that point in time that was as low of a mark since I’ve been at Tennessee. (Santiago) Vescovi came in, had three days of practice, and we knew it was inevitable that he was going to start, so I said, ‘We’re going to start him.’ We watched his growth. Josiah has been in and out. Uros (Plavsic) became eligible. For what this team has gone through and to be in this position. I think is really remarkable to be quite honest.”
On Josiah-Jordan James …
“I think across the board, I said it this week and I mean it right now too, I think that Kentucky and Kansas are the two best teams, and I think Kentucky is the most underappreciated team in college basketball, and I still believe that. That makes the fact the way we came back really something special for these guys because they felt coming in that they could win. I’m not going to say that we didn’t because we could. We went back and looked at our tape against them there. They are a much better team, but we were ten times better than we were in Knoxville. We weren’t very good on offense. Defensively, they’ve improved a lot. Across the board, I said it, not one guy didn’t help us get done what we needed to get done tonight.”
On the competition in college basketball …
“I think you look at Kentucky, you look at college basketball this year, it’s not just in our league. I think our league is underrated, but the fact of the matter is we tell our guys all the time when you lose a game by 10 points, it’s a four-possession game. Early in the year when you’re turning the ball over 20-25 times and you’re spotting the other team 10 extra possessions a game, you’re not going to win, and we didn’t win. The last two games, I didn’t look at how many turnovers we had tonight, we had 15, they had 14. Normally when we were losing, we were having 20-25. Games are closer than you think. Free throws are huge. We want to get to the free throw line. We tried to keep them off the line, but they do such a great job of getting there. We told our guys if everybody plays great, it’s going to be a close game. I don’t care who we play, and I believe that, Not just in our league, but in college basketball.”
On lost possessions in the first half …
“There’s a lot of things we could talk about. Did you take away the fact that (John) Fulkerson had a rebound, I can’t remember who took it from him, hit a three and then at the end of the half Santiago Vescovi didn’t block out and he ended the half and I said that’s five point. I said, ‘Right now this is a five point ball game even with the bad mistakes that we made and the turnovers that we had.’ They got 20 points off our turnovers in the first half, I know it, and although the turnovers were even, we didn’t have many points off it. And again, that’s all we kept talking about. Just take care of the ball and during one of the last timeouts when we got up the guys said, ‘Turn the heat up, we’re going to have to handle the ball and take care of the ball better’, and we did. I was upset at the end of the first half because I felt like we had done some things that we didn’t need to do but we just kept fighting back, and you wonder sometimes how much can you fight back, come back from 17 and again the credit goes to those guys it really does.”
On second stretch rebounds …
“Kentucky plays as hard as anybody and it’s really a simple formula if you want to win a basketball game. You have to play defense, rebound, and try to control the free throw line. You have to get there if you want to get on the road and win. Early in the game, Kentucky was getting to those rebounds, but late we came up with some and the game turned for us when we were able to break the ball loose when they were driving it in transition. Kentucky is as good as anybody in that area, but we started doing it and said they’re going to have to shoot jump shots and then we got out made some plays and some of those offensive stick-backs were big.”
On control last 10 minutes of game …
“There was a look about our guys. On the bench, coaches are always reminding me about timeouts and I told you guys before there’s a look that you see on your players faces sometimes and you don’t want to get in their way and they had that look tonight where I felt like whatever we call, they were going to execute it and they did. (John) Fulkerson was terrific. I think our guys knew we could get him the ball and he would make something happen. He made a great kickout from three and he’ll make the right play and we got on him with the travel because he should’ve been moving more, but again he was terrific.”
Kentucky Men’s Basketball Post Game Quotes
Rupp Arena – Lexington, KY
March 3, 2020
Kentucky Player Quotes
#5 Immanuel Quickley, So., G
On Josiah-Jordan James playing in the game …
“He is another really good ball handler, a left that can shoot it a little bit. So, he is really good player. I believe he is a McDonald’s All-American as well. We just really didn’t bring it today, myself, everyone.”
On the reasoning for today’s playing …
“I do not think that there is a specific reasoning. They were a better team today, credit to them. They played harder than us, executed better. You just have to give credit to them.”
On clinching the SEC Regular Season Title …
“The let down was the loss. I do not know if that was the exact reason why. You just have to move on. Practice Thursday and practice Friday and get ready for the tournament.”
On the team’s mood after the game …
“Really quiet. Everybody knows we did not play our best today. Like I said, we just have to move forward. Every team, we have had adversity this whole year. We just have to let this morph us in a positive way and get ready for the next team.”
#3, Tyrese Maxey, Fr., G
On what happened with the game …
“Gave up a lead, we didn’t fight late and that’s on us. We got to do better.”
On if this loss can be a learning lesson …
“Oh yeah, you can definitely learn something. Like you said we’ve been doing it all year, giving up leads, but we just got to bounce back. it’s like I’ve been saying you got 24 hours and after that you’re back at the drawing board to practice on Thursday.”
On Tennessee getting more offensive rebounds in the second half …
“Just not tough enough, we lost some loose balls. We dropped rebounds, big crucial rebounds we dropped and its ok, like I said we got to get back to drawing board, 24 hours is all we got to grieve and after that we’re back at it. big one on Saturday against Florida.”
On the feeling of giving up lead late …
“at this point it is what it is, we gave it up hats off to Tennessee they played great, they scored the ball down the stretch, got offensive rebounds, got stops and we didn’t so it is what it is, you got to go back to the drawing board. We’ll be at practice, practicing hard on Thursday.”
#10 Johnny Juzang, Fr., G
On the impact Josiah James had tonight…
“Yeah, he’s a good player. He definitely contributed for them.”
On how Johnny can stay on the floor, stay motivated and contribute …
“You know, different games call for different things, but I am always trying to contribute, whatever that is, defense, rebounding, communicating, scoring. Yeah, just always trying to contribute.”
On what happened in the second half …
“It was a combination of things, like I said earlier. They kind of got hot, we went into a little bit of a drought, you know, bad timing. As that happens, we could have done a better job keeping our energy up and not letting those things stretch on. It was a tough night; we’ll learn from it and bounce back.”
On what he will take away and learned from the loss …
“Off the top of my head, again, we will go back and watch film and see the little things. You got a lead, you got to keep that lead, any lead, game is not over, you got to keep playing and come out with the same energy again. So, I am sure there will be a game like this come tournament time. Have a big lead, might start slipping a little bit, so you know we will make that adjustment when it happens, if it does happen. But, off the top of my head, we just got to keep playing, put teams away.
Tennessee Student Athletes
#10 John Fulkerson, R-Jr., F.
On practicing for the game today …
“We practice every single day, it’s what we come to Tennessee for, it’s just what we practice.”
On relying on teammates in the second half …
“You know you can’t play one on five. One person can’t get it done even though if you score, you know, 40 plus, you know, one person can’t get it done. It’s got to be a team effort and so I think that’s exactly what it was. I think everybody came to play. We have some big-time players make big time shots, and so I think it was a great team effort, a great team win.”
On Tennessee’s recent struggle with closing out games …
“My dad said, ‘You know what it feels like to come back from 17 down,’ and I was like, ‘Yeah because you know what happened with Auburn.’ So, we knew that I guess, if they can do it against us then we can do it against them, so we just kept fighting and just fought until the end.”
On why this game was different from past games when Tennessee was down …
“I just think what we’ve been talking about is doing whatever it takes to win and Jordan Bowden once said either last year, or a few years ago he said, ‘We never want to walk off the court and say that the other team wanted it more than us.’ So, every time we leave the court, we want to want it more than them. We never want to have regret or say they wanted it more. That’s something that we pride ourselves on, just playing hard and doing what it takes to win and just wanting it.”
#13, Jalen Johnson, R-Jr., G
On the two big three’s he made in the first half …
“Those are shots that I work on all the time, so I got it in rhythm and shot and made one.”
On how closing out games has been an issue recently, so how is this comeback was different from others…
“I feel like because this has been the case for a few of our big games, I feel like we’re learning from our past mistakes and learning how to finish out the game the right way, so I think that showed tonight, definitely.”
On the things that were done differently to allow the team to make a comeback …
“We really executed in the second half. Although we didn’t turn over the ball as much as we have in the past, we still had to limit some of our turnovers because they got 20 points off our first half turnovers, so we had to limit some of those. Then down the line I think we got a lot of stops too.”
On what the team was saying to each other when they were down by 17 …
“This game isn’t over. I mean we’ve had games where we got a pretty good double-digit lead and teams came back on us, so we’ve made it a theme of finishing out the game on this team.”
#5, Josiah-Jordan James, Fr., G
On what allowed him to assertive/aggressive in the second half …
“Just trying to do whatever I can to get my team back into the game. I knew we were going to fight until the last 20 minutes were up in the second half. Just trying to play all out during the time that I was in there.”
On if he looked forward to playing this game for the first time with the rivalry that the two teams have …
“Yeah definitely, and playing in Rupp Arena for the first time, I definitely looked forward to that. I know it’s a great experience, great place to play, great atmosphere, but I definitely looked forward to it, not being able to play the first time.”
On what the team has learned about closing games, from games that the team hasn’t been able to close the first time …
“You got to play from start to finish. What the coach has really been harping on is stop turning the ball over from our standpoint, we got to take away the possession, and giving the possession, but we don’t get a shot up with the turnovers or we don’t let them get more turnovers throughout the game. So just taking care of the ball, and just playing harder. He always talks about a quote that Jordan Bone had that is, ‘Never at the end of the game let that team say that they wanted to win it more than you,’ and that has just been our mindset, and tonight we had that mindset.”
