Dec. 19, 2009

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Kentucky Head Coach John Calipari

Opening statement …

“We played how we practiced this week. I told them: I have never seen a softer 21-and-nine that Patrick (Patterson) had. I have never seen it. The good news is that Eric Bledsoe played in the second half. He was a no-show in the first half. What I tried to tell them is, if you can get yourself to turn on like that then you can get yourself to do it anytime. You can do it before the game. You can do it at halftime or the last five minutes. In the second half we were a little bit out of control, but offensively we are good enough that we created a little bit of separation. Defensively, we just have to be better. We are not creating any turnovers and I don’t know why. My teams, normally we are going to turn the other team over more than we turn the ball over and it is not happening with this team. It was a good win and that is a good team. They are an NCAA tournament team. I can remember that I played Coach Loos in 2002 and they beat us. I had to give him a $50,000 check and after I beat him I called him the next day. I told him that I was out coached, and my team was outplayed. His team executed, was grounder and tougher and they deserved it. That was an NCAA tournament team that they had that year too. I respect Dave. He is a good friend from my Memphis days and a terrific coach.”

On if the team needs something good to happen offensively before they really get going defensively…

“I don’t know. I just think that your practice dictates how you are going to play. I think that we were so non-competitive this week because of finals that it carried over into the game. I mean, we lost balls where the guy was dribbling up and they just grabbed it from us. We just weren’t alert. Like I said, every day we step on that court it is in an experience for us to learn from. I thought that Daniel Orton showed great energy, which is what he does for us. DeMarcus Cousins played better and did some good things. I am expecting him to be King Kong at times so when he breaks down a play, I take him out. I am holding him more accountable. Today, to be honest with you, I was just trying to shove them over the finish line. I was coaching every bounce of the ball which is not what I do or how I enjoy coaching. I am starting to hold them accountable. If you break down and don’t do what you are suppose to do I will (go with someone else.) I wanted to go with DeAndre (Liggins) to get him some minutes to see where he is. The kid (Ramon Harris) is in the Guinness book of world records, he had six rebounds in seven minutes. That is why I am putting him in. He defends and rebounds. DeAndre broke down a couple of defensive plays, but I liked his energy in the first half. I thought that DeAndre gave us the energy that we didn’t have. It is nice to have a full roster that you can go to.”

On Eric Bledsoe going from a great game against Indiana to a poor performance in the first half today…

“Because he is young and that is what he has always done. If he didn’t feel good then he just didn’t play well. You can’t do that anymore. You have to understand that six months ago his warm-up was three minutes. He did a three-minute warm-up and then went and played. You had a game at one, another at four and another at eight. These kids are just learning and they are learning about shoot-around and how every game matters. There were good things, today. I liked the way that we shoot the ball from the free throw line. Our turnovers were low the first half, but in the second half we had 10. We got up 16 or 18 and just the sloppiness that we had we were just out of our minds. It looked like we were the Globetrotters at times.”

On if it is harder for the players and the team to get up for today’s game after playing UNC, UCONN and Indiana the past week …

“It is a function of teams. It is for all of us. There’re going to be games even in the SEC when you are supposed to win and you think that you are going to win and if we play the way that we played here we are not going to make as many baskets because they are going to defend us better.”

Kentucky Players

#15, DeMarcus Cousins, F

On his play …

“I actually think I played really bad today. I came out really lazy and didn’t do good defense energy wise. Our numbers showed differently, but I think I did bad on defense today. It was a pretty tough practice week from the conditioning and I’m still kind of worn out from it, but that’s just an excuse. We just have to come out and play.”

On the play of the team…

“We all came out very lazy and sluggish today. If the same thing happens and we’re playing a better team that win might be a loss. They came out and hit us in the mouth real early. They we’re making baskets pretty early and we just fought through it and eventually got back to our normal selves.”

On getting going in the second half …

“I don’t know what got us going, we didn’t get yelled at. We went in and had 24 hustle points and we had never seen that before. We just came out and played.”

#11, John Wall, PG

On the sluggish start …

“It started off with us having a bad practice this week, and the last hour he just let us condition. That’s when it started. That last hour (of practice) we could have been working on our game and getting better as a team and working on our offense and defense, but we came out like we didn’t want to practice and he (Coach Calipari) got mad and made us run. Some people might come in one day and just don’t feel like practicing, but with a coach like Coach Cal you have to bring it everyday. He is going to tell you to just go to the sideline, and you’re not just going to sit there, you’re going to be running. I think a lot of us weren’t ready to practice and it hurt us.”

On Coach’s comments about being 6-5 …

“We’re undefeated, but when you look back at it and see some of the games we played, we should have lost. But we had a will to win and came out and made key stops. What coach says about us being 6-5 is basically true because some of those games we probably should have lost.”

On Austin Peay’s play …

“They we’re just being aggressive. Every game played is everybody else’s Super Bowl so they are going to come out and play as hard as they can and give us that kind of aggressiveness. We just have to be prepared and where that is going to start is in practice.”

#54, Patrick Patterson, F

On the first half…

“We had a very poor defensive effort, poor rebounding and poor communication. They had a bunch of open shots in the first half. Our total play was terrible in the first half.”

On his performance…

“(Coach Calipari) said that was the softest 21 (points) and nine (rebounds) I’ve seen. I agree with him. My first half was pretty much just horrible on my part. The ways I was scoring were passes from my teammates and a couple of post moves some free throws. My performance on the offensive end just wasn’t up to par. I got some transition baskets in the second half. I did a lot better running up and down the court and hitting open shots.”

On Kentucky’s 11-0 record…

“I don’t believe the team is letting its record get to its head. We all know we got a long way to go. We still want to be one of the best teams in the nation. We still want to win a national championship. We still want to go undefeated. We know we have to improve a lot on the defensive end, rebounding and communication. Day in day out, we just need to improve.”

On Austin Peay’s performance…

“They are a team that never gives up. They were down against Akron. They continued to fight and battle and hung in that game and I think they pulled it out at the very end. Coach told us they were never going to give up. They kept hitting shots. They got some offensive rebounds and a couple loose balls, transition baskets off our turnovers. They just never gave up.”

#1, Darius Miller, G

On Kentucky’s performance…

“I think we realize that we had a bad week of practice. We know we didn’t play really good today, as well as we thought we could have played. I don’t think we are arrogant. I just feel we have to learn to play on the days we don’t feel like being there. Everybody has days when you are feeling sluggish or just lazy. We just have to come out and learn how to play on those days.

“When we pulled away, we just picked up our intensity. We were playing real sluggish. We didn’t have any intensity on the offensive or defensive end. We weren’t really pressuring them or forcing turnovers. We were just laid back and going through the motions. Once we picked up the intensity that’s when we were able to pull away. I still don’t think the intensity was where it should have been.”

On the rest of the season…

“We just have to be ready to play every night. If we would have lost the game,nobody would want to hear those excuses, we had finals or something like that.We got to just play when we are feeling sluggish or lazy on days like that. Wegot to come out and be prepared (to play) every single game, because when weare playing a Florida, Tennessee or Vanderbilt it is going to tough to win agame like that.”

Austin Peay Head Coach Dave Loos

Opening statement …

“This game was a lot like I thought it would be. Kentucky, as advertised, is very good. Obviously, they are too big and strong inside for us. When we play a team like this, the margin for error is so thin. I felt like they didn’t miss a free throw, and that was because they didn’t. We hung in there and I was proud of our guys. We hung pretty tough for a good bit of time, and at the seven-minute mark we were down nine with the ball. We had a chance. But, they are very good. They absolutely dominated us on the board and shot it very well from three, the field and free throw line.”

On lessons learned…

“We have some issues to solve, and that is the purpose. You can find out about your team. We have got to figure out how to deal with things when the margin for error is so thin. That is the big thing to focus on. We need to get ready to go into conference play, because on our level, that is what it is all about. The final score looks ugly, but it will help us down the road because of the experience we go today.”

On game preparation…

“I thought we had some brain cramps from time to time. We let the shot clock run out and we were totally surprised when it went off. I don’t know if it was due to exams, but there was some mental lapse out there.

On the matchup with Kentuck…

“The biggest concern in my mind, coming into this game was that these guys are so long and athletic. I was worried at getting good looks at the basket and I’m glad we got good looks. We didn’t do much with them, but we got good looks. It helped to get us off to a decent start. I was also worried about what kind of start we would get off to.”

Austin Peay Players 

#22, Wes Channels, G

On Kentucky’s runs impacting the game…

“We fell apart at the end of the game. We played our hardest and gave a good effort. We have to learn how to contain the game especially when teams go on runs. We have to be able to handle that and to slow the game down to our pace. We sped up which caused Kentucky to be able to speed up and keep the run going that helped them tremendously. We should have slowed the game down once Kentucky went on their run. “

On having to play in Kentucky’s fast paced game…

“It is difficult. The crowd gets in to the game and you cannot communicate to your teammates the way you usually would. The noise level is unreal as well. I think that played a big role in us speeding up our game.”

On how disappointing this loss is…

“It hurts when you play hard and you hang in there, you go punch for punch but in a matter of minutes you give up the game. That hurts the most.”

On heading in to conference play …

“We feel good about our play. We have shown that we can play with big teams. Although we lost tonight, we have to get this out of our head because we play a good Evansville team on Tuesday. There is nothing we can change about tonight’s game, we will forget it and try to get better.”

#21, John Fraley, C

On playing against John Wall…

“It didn’t seem like he was scoring a lot until I saw how many he actually had. He is a very effective player. He was really getting teammates involved (tonight) and being an unselfish player.”

On today’s game …

“The effort was there. I felt we played very hard, especially against a team like Kentucky. We were matching them (UK) shot-for-shot for a while and in the end it came down to defense.”

On what the team was thinking when Kentucky went on its second half run…

“We were trying to not lose our composure. When you play a team like this (UK), there is no room for error. You can’t make mental mistakes. I think it came down to little errors that helped them go on that run.”