John Calipari
On Kevin Knox saying the team didn’t listen to him enough down the stretch …
“No, here’s what this – this started at shootaround today, where you got a bunch of guys that don’t that know having a great shootaround doesn’t guarantee a great game, but going through the motions or not paying attention and not being focused guarantees what happens when the game is in the crunch.
“We got up 14, had the ball, PJ (Washington) throws a cross-court pass – not what we were trying to do. That’s not what we had called. And then Hami (Diallo) fouls intentionally. ‘I didn’t do it. I didn’t do it.’ You pulled the guy’s shirt out of his pants. ‘I didn’t do it. I didn’t grab.’ You pulled the guy’s shirt out of his pants. So, don’t say that. You did it. All of a sudden, Nick (Richards) misses a dunk and this – it doesn’t go right and all of a sudden you got a bunch of young guys that don’t know how to grind it in that situation. You gotta stop the bleeding. We go to the foul line late, South Carolina makes every free throw. We’re going 1 outta 2, 0 outta – every one. You’re going to lose the game.
“I’m really disappointed, but you know what, you gotta give South Carolina credit. They played like Frank (Martin) coaches. Their down and it looks like, OK, they’re going to get smacked, and they never stopped playing. Then they got the momentum. I was trying to hold back to not call timeout to get under the four(-minute mark) because I knew we were going to need it. I probably should have called one earlier when it got to six (points).
“(Chris) Silva just – we did a pretty good job in the first half, the second half they just said, we’re throwing it to him, and my big guys stayed behind him. You won’t believe at every timeout what I was saying, ‘Don’t stand behind him. At least get on the side of him so he has to catch it out.’
“We’re not there yet. We got, hopefully, I hate to say it, you gotta take some losses to get guys to start listening. What also ends up happening in a game like this, individual players really look like they’re not very good players. When you start realizing it, ‘Yeah, we’re not very good, but you’re not very good. You’re hurting yourself. Let’s get this right.’ So, hopefully we’ll move on from here and get this one right.”
On if he felt like he was living on the edge at the end of these games …
“No, we weren’t up that many points. Like, this game was ours. All we had to do was grab it. No, the other games were throughout the whole game they were always close. We were never up big. This was a different situation for them. You’re up, OK, finish the game. No, they just – there’s an unwarranted arrogance that we get up, we’re really good, or I’m really good and I’m going to do what I’m choosing to do, I’m not going to listen to what you’re saying. That’s what happened, and then it started rolling and all of a sudden we couldn’t stop the onslaught. They deserved to win. There was no – this wasn’t about us. This was about South Carolina.”
On when he learned that Jarred Vanderbilt was going to play …
“He told me prior to the game. Yeah, he was pretty good for the first time out. He’s trying to figure out what we’re doing. We really haven’t scrimmaged with him in. We’ve done some half-court stuff. I thought he was pretty good for the first time out.”
On how much UK had to play without a point guard …
“A lot of the game, and when we played with one he wasn’t very good either. So, basically we played the whole game without a point guard.
“We had our chances to win anyway. I mean, that wasn’t the – look, there were balls that we should have had rebounds. Like, I’ve never seen so many dumb fouls. Like, just grab a guy and pull his shirt out. Excuse me, do you think this is lacrosse? What are you – the guy drives baseline, just reach in and grab him. I mean, I’m going to have to watch the tape to make sure they’re all fouls, but I mean – and you understand these guys are coming over to the bench saying what? ‘I didn’t foul him. I didn’t grab him.’ ‘OK, well let me watch the tape.’ But they looked like fouls every time we reached in. The guys drives by you and instead of moving your feet your reach in and grab him? I mean it was, whew. This one will be a tough second half to watch. The first half will probably be tough to watch too.”
On South Carolina junior forward Chris Silva …
“He was the difference. He manhandled everybody we put on him. We didn’t double every time. We didn’t double as much in the zone. We probably should have. We were telling guys, dig in to his lap and we didn’t. But he just moved people. He bullied them, he moved them, he dominated them, he manhandled anybody on my team.”
On South Carolina’s quick start …
“I had to sub a couple guys early. ‘Like, look, if you’re not ready to go you can’t be in here. You gotta sit down.’ They were—it’s typical of teams that play us. Teams that play us are—they’re not going to give us a bad game. They’re playing us. And South Carolina always gives us a good game. They always do.”
On how they prepared for South Carolina’s style under Frank Martin …
“Well, we talked about the offensive rebounding. They got 14 of them and, you know, we got six. Now, that is basically an effort situation and a toughness situation. Before the ball is hitting the rim you’re working for position. That’s what Silva does. So, he was wedging Kevin Knox or whoever was near him in a position where he could go get the ball and jump and go get it. We showed that. We also talked about how they disrupt defensively. But, you know, again, we had 16 turnovers and my point guard had six. I mean, he had no assists and six turns. It was not one of his better games. And the offensive fouls, the fourth one was. You’re not getting by somebody, you can’t push off. If you can’t get by somebody, don’t try to get by him. This was—this looked like a bunch of freshmen playing. First time this year, I would say, in the second half. First half, you would look and say, ‘Oh, they got a nice team and they’re da, da, da.’ They’re all freshmen. In the second half, you looked at us and we looked like a bunch of freshmen playing like freshmen would play. Which, again, I’m kind of disappointed in, but these kids aren’t machines, they’re not robots. They’re not great every time out. There’s up and downs of this. There is the unwarranted arrogance of a typical team that thinks they’re better than they are and all the other stuff that goes along with the growth of a program or a season and the process you go through. So let’s learn and move on.”
On his half-court make at shootaround today …
“Robes (John Robic) was mad when I made it. I try to make them, but normally I don’t.”
On South Carolina’s crowd …
“Yeah, every time we come in here it’s a packed house. Normally we have some fans here too. I imagine they never could really get into the game, especially at the end. It was a great crowd. I imagine they had a good time and enjoyed themselves.”
Kevin Knox
On tonight being an example of late-game execution issues …
“This was another great example of we don’t know how to close games out. I think at one point we were up 14, then I think the intentional foul happened and that kind of changed the whole complexion of the game. Because then from there they started making everything, getting every rebound. Coach was trying to get us to make winning plays down the stretch. We weren’t just really doing what he was asking for. We were trying to do our own thing and you could see what happened. They kind of came back and won the game.”
On foul trouble …
“That was tough for us because we had to stay in that zone and they were kind of picking at it and throwing it inside. We couldn’t really do much because we couldn’t foul and we had our point, Shai (Gilgeous-Alexander), have four fouls and Hami (Diallo) have four fouls so we couldn’t really pressure the ball and play man. So I think that kind of changed the game too. We had a lot of people in foul trouble from charges and offensive fouls. We just gotta work on fixing that.”
On Jarred Vanderbilt …
“Jarred’s a great ball-handler. He has a good feel for the game, good passing skills so he can definitely help us handling the ball sometimes. We get Quade (Green) back soon and when Shai was – great example – when Shai was in foul trouble, we needed another point guard, Jarred stepped up. I thought he did a good job and it was his first game back, so once gets the feel for it and gets the plays down it could be another great addition to the team.”
On the reasons for Gilgeous-Alexander’s struggles …
“The last few games Shai’s been really killing it and getting to the basket. They did film and they strategized and every time he tried to go to the basket, they just collapsed and the defender stayed in front of him and he got a lot of offensive fouls off that. We worked on getting skip passes, but he just kept going on. He’ll keep working on that. I know he’ll bounce back, but they did their research, they did their film and did a really good job collapsing the paint when we drove and taking charges.”
On the crowd …
“They got loud. They weren’t loud when we were up 14, of course. When it kind of changed the game with the intentional foul and they started hitting some shots, the next thing you know the crowd started getting into it. We missed some key free throws that we should have made down the stretch. I think the crowd definitely played a big impact because they got up and got loud and they were really into it.”
On free-throw misses becoming contagious …
“Free throws are all mental. You just gotta get to the line, just tell yourself you’re going to make it and, like I said, the first half was all quiet. They weren’t really loud. The next thing you know in the second half they kind of got into it. That kind of helped with them with the free throws because we started missing them. But free throws are all mental. I know we’ll work on it in practice and we’ll knock them down next game.”
On what they need to do to finish games …
“We just gotta listen to Coach Cal. He was telling us things that we should have done down the stretch, winning plays, he says. And we didn’t do that. We kind of took our own shots, ran none of the plays, playing no defense. We weren’t listening to anything the coaches were saying. We got all freshmen. It’s a learning experience for us. We’re going to need it down the stretch in March Madness and down the road in some of the bigger games on the road. It’s another learning experience. We’ll go from here and learn how to make winning plays.”
On why they wouldn’t listen to what coaches were saying …
“I mean, like Coach Cal told us, you get into the game, we’re up 14, you think the game’s over with, you’re trying to do your own thing, basically. And like Cal says, instead of getting it to 20 and taking the win and going home, next thing you know we tried to do our own thing, they get back into it, not listening, people trying to get their own baskets. So we just gotta stick together as a team and just listen to Coach and we’ll be fine.”
On the 3-point streak …
“We’re not really a 3-point shooting team. That’s not what we focus on. We got a couple guys that can knock them down, but we weren’t really knocking them down tonight. They sat in that zone in the second half. I think that kind of changed the game a little bit too because in man we were killing them, getting to the basket, getting fouls and I hit some good floaters. Nick had a great game for as bad as he’s been playing, but they kind went to that zone and we couldn’t really get anything inside. We kind of settled for jump shots, so that kind of changed the game too.”
On whether he was aware the streak would have ended had he not made the 3 …
“I was not aware of that and that was kind of late in the game, too, so it was real close to ending that. But we just gotta keep working on our 3-point shot. We work on it a lot in practice. We just gotta knock them down.”
On Chris Silva and South Carolina’s physicality …
“He did a really good job of getting good position down in the paint. He was killing us in the second half, just getting down low in the post and just throwing up some shots. He either got fouled or made them, so he did a really good job sealing our big man because in the first half—he had 12 points at halftime. We were doing a pretty good job on him, but next thing you know they kind of went to him in the second half, kept going to him, kept going to him and he just kind of made basket after basket and nobody could stop him.”
On South Carolina’s quick start to the game …
“We went down 7-0 to start the game off and Coach Cal got on us in the timeout. We didn’t come out ready to play. We knew the strategy was—they knew that we were going to come out, they were going to deny passes and the first pass we threw, it got stolen, went down for a dunk, so Cal was not—he was really upset with that. We just got a lot of work to do in practice. We’re freshmen, like I said. It’s a learning experience. We’ll bounce back. This is a good game for us. Good, physical team. We’re going to see a lot more down the road.”
