You’ve see this by now in all likelihood, but on Sunday John Calipari wrote a post of his website reaffirming his belief in his team. Playing their first game without Nerlens Noel, the Wildcats suffered an 88-58 defeat at Tennessee. Afterward, Coach Cal said some of his players are “not very coachable,” but his post on Sunday amended that statement while restating in no uncertain terms that UK still can accomplish a great deal this season:
Make no mistake about it, we are still in a great position to do whatever we want to do. We can still write our own story.The only way to do that is to fight back, to fight our way out of this. We can blame whoever we want to – fate, luck, whoever – or we can take it upon ourselves to choose our own path and fight our way back. If we don’t fight, we don’t have a shot.I refuse to believe they don’t have the fight in them to do this. I refuse to believe they aren’t coachable. I refuse to believe either one of those because we’ve got good kids.There has to be a reason why guys are walking out of timeouts and not doing what they are supposed to. I may say publicly they are “uncoachable,” but I refuse to believe that because I believe in these guys and I believe they can change. I say it to get them to change, to prove to themselves and others that they can do this.I’ve had teams get beat like we did (Saturday) that came back a little mad, a little ticked off and said they weren’t going to let that happen again. They didn’t win every game, but they didn’t let something like that happen again. Are we really going to let go of the rope after one loss like that? It is just one game.
Link: I believe in this team and I believe in its fightIndeed it is just one game. The final margin and the general lopsidedness of the entire game was clearly disappointing, but the Cats are still 17-8. Without Noel, UK still has to prove itself as a team, and that process begins in the practice gym. The Cats will then have a chance to show their progress on Wednesday in Rupp Arena in a rematch with Vanderbilt.
