Kentucky Basketball Previews Florida
UK MEDIA RELATIONS
MEN’S BASKETBALL
FLORIDA-UK PREGAME MEDIA
JAN. 19, 2018
JOE CRAFT CENTER – LEXINGTON, KY.
John Calipari
On what the team has missed the most in Quade Green’s absence …
“One more perimeter shooter. One more guy that can make baskets. He leads, he talks. He’s one of the most talkative guys so it’s affected us, but it’s given us a chance to look at other things and other players. You know, if we would’ve slipped by that last game, it would’ve been: How do we do this without the kid? But unfortunately we didn’t and we saw some flaws and you get to see them.”
On where Green is in his recovery …
“We’ll see. It’s probably game-time (decision) to see if he’ll get some minutes. It’d be nice if he could give us some minutes just so Shai (Gilgeous-Alexander) can sit out five minutes a half or so, but we’ll see.”
On if that’s more important with concern to Florida having good perimeter players …
“I guess. They’re a good team, they get after it, they play hard. They space the court. They’ll go at somebody they think they can beat on the bounce. They’re good. They shoot a ton of 3’s. They’ll come in here and shoot 30 3’s. And if they’re making 15, 20, then guess what? Who’s next? It’ll be a hard game. We know they will do it. To be honest, I know how good they are. I’m concerned about we gotta get out mentality right, our approach to this right. You gotta have fun playing and coaching. When you’re not having fun, you gotta look back and say, ‘We must not be sharing the ball. We must not be playing with energy, spirit. We must – we’re being defensive when you’re being coached.’ All of the stuff that comes with ‘OK, I’m not having fun.’ We just gotta back – let’s have a ball playing and see what it does. Let’s go dive on the floor, let’s take charges, let’s make the extra pass, let’s talk, let’s high five. Guys get to where, ‘I don’t feel like that today.’ Well then you’re going to lose. You got to figure out every game day – the whole day is to get yourself into that frame of mind. Don’t go through shootaround and act like it doesn’t matter because then you play like the game doesn’t matter. Then all of the sudden, all of the other negative stuff comes with that. But we’ve got a good group. I’m excited about today. We made strides yesterday; let’s make them again today. Let’s get on that path.”
On Seth Greenberg’s comments about UK …
“When he says it, I didn’t read the article, he said ‘I’m gonna do something.’ I said, ‘be easy, these kids are young.’ One thing about Seth: he doesn’t have an agenda. He’s not going to try and hurt anybody. That’s not who he is. He’s not going to hurt this program or me so when he makes statements – he was probably – they need to be addressed. I mean if you watched us, you probably would have said the same thing. But again I didn’t read it, I didn’t see it, but I heard about it and I just smiled. He just left me a message, and my text back to him was, ‘Be easy on them. They’re young.’ You know I can take the stuff. I’ve been doing this, well dog years here, so long time. These kids are young, and right now we’re just trying to get them. They’ve got to accept. Yesterday we watched tape, the last five minutes, last 5:50 of the game up seven. We just threw the ball to them, and the breakaway layup. I made each of them say, ‘That’s on me.’ We did it unison so they knew how to say it. ‘Let’s do it together: that’s on me. Louder, I didn’t hear that.’ And then okay, what, and the guy had to say, ‘that’s on me coach.’ One guy was, ‘mumbles.’ No, I didn’t hear it. We all need to hear you say you’re responsible for that because again, you have to self-evaluate. You can’t be defensive about how you’re playing. If you’re playing good, why are you playing good? Keep playing good. Can you take it to another level? Don’t be satisfied. If you’re playing bad, why are you playing bad? How can you change it? You can’t keep doing the same things over and over and think it’s gonna change. That’s insanity, there you go, you guys have been listening to me. That’s the definition of insanity: I’m going to do everything the same, but the result’s gonna change. It doesn’t. And so as a group we’ve got to make the game easier for each other so they can have fun. And that means pass the ball.”
On UK guards having no assists at South Carolina …
“See it’s really funny. No one passed the ball, so when you get it you don’t pass it, and when you don’t pass it you’re mad because he didn’t pass it, but you’re not mad that you didn’t pass it. You kind of slip into this, and now we’ve got to bounce them out of it. I’ve got a good team, I do. We’ve got some holes like every other team in the country, but we’ve got some things that other people do not have, and will not have. We have them here. Now we just — it’s my job to figure it out, and to get them think differently. And if they don’t they cannot be on the court. You just can’t be out there. There isn’t any arguing, there is no, ‘ahhh.’ Boom, you’re out.”
On UK’s depth …
“That’s been an issue, but now we’ve got some guys coming back. It’s a little bit different now. We have to just see.”
On Jarred Vanderbilt’s play at South Carolina …
“It’s more than that. He played hard. He competed. He went after rebounds in traffic, he went and got balls. He was the only guy. We had guys play 32 minutes and get two rebounds.”
On how Vanderbilt’s body reacted after playing his first game …
“I asked him, ‘How are you?’ He said, ‘How many minutes did you think I played? I said, ‘I probably played you two too many. I was going to play you 12. You played 14.’ This game maybe 16, 18. I just told him if you think you can play more, fine. If not, that’s fine too. We’ll just keep going.”
On how Vanderbilt’s toughness affects the team …
“Somebody told me something that he was in 30 possessions. They scored point-eight times per possession, under a point per possession. When he was out, it was one-point-two points per possession. That’s a big number. Just that one change. Again, toughness, being active. Maybe, it’s because he wasn’t playing 35 minutes. That could have been it. I will say this. He went in and competed. I was happy for him.”
On scrimmaging more in practice …
“I’m just trying to get him on the court playing because we haven’t done a whole lot and we shoved in a game, and he was looking at me like, ‘What do we?’ ‘Don’t worry about it, just go at the glass.’ We’re trying to do stuff where he’s more comfortable playing with his teammates. But again, I’m also putting people against each other. Because, if you want to start, then beat him. And if he wants to start, you beat him. I mean if you want to play more, then you get him. I made that just to make it a little more competitive. But, again, you can see my issue right now. We’re playing a really good team, and we needed some time to focus on them. But at this point, we can’t. If we get this right and it’s not good enough, we’ll move on to the next game. But if we get it right, I’m going to feel good. If we don’t get it right, it doesn’t matter. At some point this has got to change, and we got to focus. If you’re about everybody else in life, it’s easier. Life’s easier. You’re more worried about everybody else than yourself. Life’s easy. As a basketball player, it’s exactly the same thing. If you worry about everybody else and not yourself, the game is easy. If you’re concerned about how many shots, I got to get mine, you all see it. You say that dude is just worried about himself. That is when guys will say they’re selfish. They’re not really selfish. They’re just trying to do – they’re so concerned about how they play. We got to get out of that. Let’s worry about how we play together, collectively. Let’s be more engaged offensively and defensively together. Let’s really be in huddles listening. Well, it’s hard to listen when you’re worried about how many shots you make. That’s what a normal 17 and 18-year-old does. That’s what we’re battling right now.”
On how leadership helped in the past …
“You have some older guys. You have some leadership that would step up and grab guys and make them change. Right now, it’s hard because no one will grab the guys and say you can’t do this or I’m going to tell Coach to sit you out. We don’t have that right now. I was hoping it was PJ (Washington), but he took as step back. He didn’t have the same spirit. You can’t talk then. You got to be one of the guys. I need someone, maybe it’s Jarred. Maybe Jarred becomes that guy, I don’t know. We will see.”
Kentucky Players
#4, Nick Richards, Fr., F
On Coach Cal saying his team got “manhandled” two of the past four games …
“I wouldn’t say that. I think they just have experience over us, but we can’t really use that as an excuse. … I think it was just more of a team effort. That’s why we lost. The team didn’t really play together and it resulted in an L.”
On how other teams are using their experience against Kentucky …
“I wouldn’t really say experience. More like they stuck to the game plan more than we did.”
On his expectations of College GameDay …
“When you’re a high school kid and you’re just watching College GameDay, now you’re going to be a part of it. It’s really a blessing to be honest. It’s going to be one of the most exciting times of my college career.”
On ESPN college basketball analyst Seth Greenberg saying the freshmen are spoiled …
“I’ve seen it. I’ve seen what he said. I don’t really pay attention to what the media says about us. They’re entitled to their opinion and we know what’s going on back here. We’re the ones practicing every day, working out every day, listening to the coaches. I saw it, but I didn’t really listen to what he said.”
On Greenberg saying the freshmen don’t really care about college and are focused on the NBA …
“I would say that’s false. We’re all right here. We’re just trying to win a national championship. That’s everyone’s main goal. We just have to find a common ground and hopefully get it done.”
On what the video against South Carolina looked like …
“You could tell we didn’t match their energy. So, they came out strong, they came out more aggressive than us and it resulted in us not scoring in like eight minutes or something like that. It’s just one of those things you have to learn and just gotta move on from it. Just get ready for the next game.”
On Florida maybe not having bigs that can “manhandle” Kentucky …
“It’s just going to be another regular game for us. It’s Florida, it’s not a real, regular game. It’s going to be a fun game. It’s going to be College GameDay. It’s one of the most exciting times ever. Just can’t wait to be a part of it.”
On what UK misses most when Quade Green is out …
“Well, we both love Shai (Gilgeous-Alexander) and Quade. They’re both equally as important to us. So, I would say there are moments in the game when Shai is tired and there’s no one off the bench to help him get a rest.”
On if Jarred Vanderbilt’s return helps in that regard if Green cannot play …
“Jarred coming back helps everybody, to be honest. It helps us when I need a break. He can sub in for me and give me a minute. Or if guys like PJ (Washington) or Kevin (Knox) need a break, he can come in and give them a minute as well.”
On if Vanderbilt plays with a toughness and edge …
“He plays with a lot of energy. We see it in practice a lot. He plays hard every possession. That could be one thing that could help us.”
On if the last game helped him get back on track …
“I’m never looking at myself and my individual stats. I’m just looking at where we took an L as a team. That’s something I’m not really happy about. That’s something we have to address as a team and get better and get ready for the next game, hopefully get a W.”
On looking more confident at South Carolina …
“Not really. My teammates are getting on me more. They’re telling me I should play with more confidence. When I looked at the film, they’re all telling me I looked a little bit too intense, like there’s a lot of pressure on my back. They’re just telling me to let all of that go and play the game that you love and you’ll be fine.”
#25, PJ Washington, Fr., F
On the biggest lesson they are learning …
“Just to continue to fight for 40 minutes. I feel like when we do a good job of that, we win games. When we don’t, we lose games. We just gotta keep doing that and just get everybody else healthy and once we do that we’ll be all right.”
On how long it took to get over the loss …
“We watch the film one time and then we try to forget about it. But we try to learn the lessons from the game and I feel like we did that and we just try to apply it to practice and we did that yesterday and we’re going to try to do it again today.”
On how easy it is to forget about the loss …
“I mean, yeah, it works because you have to focus on your next opponent and you can’t underestimate anybody in this league. That’s what we’re trying to do and just trying to go out and get a win tomorrow vs. Florida.”
On whether anything surprised him about Jarred Vanderbilt’s first game …
“Not at all. I’ve been knowing Jarred since third grade, like I said, so I know his game pretty much in and out. He’s a great player and I just can’t wait for him to be back fully.”
On what it will be like when Vanderbilt is back fully …
“It’s going to be great. Jarred’s a beast. He can do everything on the court. He can guard one through five. He can play one through five. He can shoot. He can pass. He can dribble. You all pretty much saw it in just the short spurt he was in. Once he gets back fully healthy with no limits to his playing time, we’re going to be all right.”
On when they had Vanderbilt and Brad Calipari in the backcourt …
“We went with that lineup because of foul trouble and it was just—I didn’t expect it at all. We just gotta continue to play through it and just keep fighting. I feel like we did a good job of that first half, but second half we didn’t do as well as we planned. We’re just trying to focus on the next opponent.”
On whether South Carolina was a throwaway game because of how weird it was …
“No, we definitely felt like we could have won that game. So it wasn’t a throwaway game. We felt like—we were up 15 and we lost that game, so we definitely felt like we could have won that game. We’re just focused on the next opponent, like I said, and just trying to go into practice today with the mindset of getting better.”
On finding consistency at the college level …
“It’s different because D-1 college athletes, they can all play basketball. In the high-school level, you have some players that play basketball that don’t really want to do this for a living. Most of the people on the college level want to do this for a living, so they’re pretty good at it. They’re athletic. Everybody’s athletic, everybody can shoot and everybody can pretty much play so it’s hard to find your niche and do what you do.”
On whether it’s frustrating to not have found consistency …
“It just comes with your mental. You just gotta be prepared every day in and every day out and just fight on a consistent basis and just get shots up in the gym and just continue to focus on you and getting better.”
On dealing with Florida’s deep backcourt …
“We just gotta limit them to perimeter shots. They’re a good 3-point shooting team and we just have to limit them, like I said, and just focus on the defensive end and we’ll be all right.”
On what they saw in watching tape of the second half at South Carolina …
“We just saw—we gave up a 15-point lead pretty easy and we were kind of mad about that, so we just tried to focus on playing yesterday and focus on fighting for the whole practice.”
