Cats Making Memories, Having Fun

MEMPHIS, Tenn. – That UCLA game, no doubt, was special for John Calipari.

It doesn’t get much more rewarding for a coach than to watch a group of players execute and win a game against an elite team.

But if you were to ask Coach Cal his personal highlight from Kentucky’s run in this NCAA Tournament, there’s a good chance the memorable win might not even top the list. Based on the way he talked about it on Saturday, a much simpler, more mundane moment might be the leader in the clubhouse.

Calipari was walking to the media room at FedExForum behind his five starters, De’Aaron Fox, Malik Monk, Isaiah Briscoe, Derek Willis and Bam Adebayo, for a press conference. What he saw was a group of five young men who genuinely like each other, laughing and joking all the way.

“For me to be behind it seeing it, that’s what this is about,” Calipari said. “They’re going to remember this experience together when this is over, and that’s why you want them to just — all of them have success.”

In the midst of a 14-game winning streak, second-seeded UK (32-5) is certainly having plenty of that entering an Elite Eight matchup with No. 1 North Carolina (30-7) at 5:05 p.m. ET on Sunday. A win would put Coach Cal in his fifth Final Four at Kentucky, send media covering the team to Phoenix for college basketball’s biggest weekend and give Wildcat fans their 18th Final Four to celebrate.

Those five players walking down that hallway and the memories they make in the process are who Calipari is really interested in though. 

“If they’d chose not to play, we don’t have a tournament,” Calipari said. “This tournament is about them. It’s not about me as a coach. It’s not about you as the media. It’s not about the fan. It’s about these kids.”

Based on the way they seem to be enjoying themselves in Memphis, Tennessee, those kids are having the time of their lives.

On the podium at the end of that hallway for their press conference, the Cats seemed to be more at ease in front of the media than at any point this season. There were jokes all around, with Calipari and Monk both shushing Fox after he got a little too bold about UK’s future prospects in the tournament and jabbing Adebayo.

When they were each asked one by one to reflect on their salient memory from the first UK-UNC matchup, Monk managed to do both in one response and prompted a funny back-and-forth.

“Fox still can’t answer, but I just remember Bam fouling out with like six minutes left in the game,” Monk said, slyly glancing over the career-high 47 points he scored in the game.

“He left us hanging,” Briscoe chimed in.

“He left us hanging,” Monk added. “That’s all I remember.”

Responded Adebayo: “Did we win?”

“Yeah, we won,” Briscoe admitted.

“All right then,” Adebayo said, satisfied.

Such interplay would never have happened in a setting like Saturday’s as recently as a few weeks ago, but the Cats’ growth as a team has them rightly at ease and comfortable in their own skin. That showed in the way they took down UCLA, mostly notably in the joy Fox’s teammates took in his 39-point performance.

There was no element of jealousy, only good-natured ribbing about the fact that Fox narrowly missed out on a milestone in the highest-scoring performance by a freshman in NCAA Tournament history.

“If I’m scoring, everybody’s happy for me,” Fox said after the game. “You don’t see anybody being selfish or anything like that. When I missed one of those free throws at the end, Malik was like, ‘Man, you’re scared to get 40.’ I was like, ‘Man, that’s crazy.’ Just knowing that my teammates love when I have a performance like this is that much more exciting.”

OK, so maybe the UCLA game is Calipari’s favorite moment of the tournament after all. It’s tough to beat seeing the most important lesson you try to impart to your players put into action.

“We talk about servant-leadership in this program,” Calipari said. “It means you’re more about your teammate than yourself. That’s what it means, and we try to teach that, and we try to live that, and these kids have done that.”