Part 1 | Part 2Question: If you go to the baseball rule, you have a lot of kids that want to come here because Calipari gets me to the league quicker than anybody. Would that not follow then that you guys might be more adversely affected by that rule than anybody?Calipari: Here is how we would be adversely affected: They would have to figure out when does that kid decide. You have to get together with the players association and the NCAA and say, ‘When are you going to let that kid say he is going or staying? You’re going to let him do it in June? How can you let him do it in June? Where will a lot of those kids want to go?’ Now a reason they will have a remedy for that, because it’s not going to just be Kentucky – it will be Duke, North Carolina, Kansas. It won’t just be us. If it was just us, they could care less. Let them decide in July. But it isn’t going to be just us. It’s going to be everybody. Now, when do you let those kids decide? Do you tell them in February? By the middle of February you’ve got to let us know if you’re going pro, and if you say you’re going pro, you’re gone – you’re going to the D-League, you’re going overseas, you’re going to the NBA. If you’re not, after that February 15 deadline, you must go to college and stay two years. But the issue becomes, when are you going to let them decide? It happened to me at Memphis with Amare Stoudemire – made a good decision – Kendrick Perkins, Qyntel Woods. Do you honestly think I recruited these kids and they told me they were thinking about going pro? What do you think they told me? ‘I’m coming. I want you to prepare me. I’m not ready. I’m telling you.’ Now it’s February: ‘We’re all good, coach.’ It’s March: ‘I’m telling you.’ And then in June, what? ‘Coach, I’m going pro.’ And you’re standing there. That’s the issue that’s going to help us. Can you imagine us having that team for two years, that team we just had?Question: But would you have that team for two years?Calipari: If the rules change you would have no choice.Quesiton: But don’t you think John might have gone right out of high school? And maybe DeMarcus Cousins?Calipari: Maybe, maybe. No, no, not DeMarcus. But how about if it were the old days, 20 years ago. If it were the old days, we would have had this team three years ago. Now, let me say this about our recruiting: Our recruiting would be different. To say that we have had highly touted recruiting classes three and four years in a row, we had no choice. Back then it was every other year. I plug in and then something happens. Maybe you have a big year. That next year, boom. That’s how I did it at UMass. We didn’t have a great (class). We had them when we needed to have them. It was easy. Kids would say they know who is there and who is not there.Question: You talked about how this year’s team isn’t last year’s team, but for these freshmen, that’s a lot to live up to. They’re 18-year-old kids. Don’t you think Brandon is going to come in and try to be as good as John is and don’t you think Enes (Kanter) will think ‘I’ve got to be as good as DeMarcus was?Calipari: The biggest thing is we’re not playing last year’s team. We’re playing against ourselves. How good can we be? I want them to think about winning every game, and the only way you do that is how you prepare. Create a swagger through hard work, which they are. I also want them to understand, and I’ve already said it to them, we’re not worried about last year. Last year is done. The question is how good can this team be? Every kid I recruit I say the same thing whether it’s Brandon or Doron (Lamb). ‘I don’t need you to be anybody besides Doron. Now, I need a better version of that, but that’s all I need you to be. Be who you are.’ That’s the challenges of all coaches. You’ve got other teams coming back where they’ve won the national title – Duke – and the attitude. Well, there’s a pressure there of we’re supposed to win every game now. Are we going to win every single game now? If they don’t it’s a disappointment. Outside of Kentucky, they know there’s no way they can be as good as they were a year ago. They just lost too much. At Kentucky, they’re going to be better than last year and they’re going to win by 30.Question: What are we all going to write about? We’ll all write how these freshmen are going to measure up to last year’s class.Calipari: Well, they won’t. You might as well write that right now. They can’t. It’s not possible. You’re talking about something that had never been done before in the history of our sport, and that was five players drafted in the first round, four of them after one year. I’m going to tell you right now, if it ever happens again, I’ll be stunned. And if it does, it will happen here – if it does, and I can’t see it happening again.