Kentucky Basketball Previews Auburn
UK MEDIA RELATIONS
MEN’S BASKETBALL
UK-AUBURN PREGAME MEDIA OPPORTUNITY
FEB. 13, 2018
JOE CRAFT CENTER – LEXINGTON, KY.
Kenny Payne
On Coach Calipari’s comments that he’s glad the game is at Auburn against a ranked opponent …
“I think if you’ve been around Cal long enough, you realize opportunity. This is a great opportunity for us to go into a hostile environment – a bunch of young players, freshmen and sophomores – and go steal one. That’s the game plan – go take one from them. They’re not going to give it to us. Without a doubt, they’ve been one of the best teams in this conference. They only have two losses in conference. Everything will say we’ve got our hands full, so go prove people wrong.”
On how much of a challenge they’re facing with losing and if the fact that some players never really lost much in high school has anything to do with that …
“That’s a great point. I think the challenge is there’s four-, five-, six-minute stretches in games where we’re not producing, where we go four minutes without a basket, where we go five minutes and (opposing teams) score seven out of eight possessions. We’re not good enough to make that up. We’re just not. We’re a good team, but when you give teams baskets – literally give them baskets – and it’s going to come down to a two-, four-, six-point game, you look back at the game in those four-minute spurts that happened multiple times throughout the game, they end up killing you.”
On how well he thinks the guys understand how tough it is to make that up …
“I think they’re learning that, but they’re young and inexperienced to that. They’re getting a lesson that there are no excuses at Kentucky. There is no, ‘My stomach hurts. I don’t feel good. I’m fighting the flu. I don’t have it tonight.’ There is no, ‘The referee gave me a bad call.’ There is no, ‘I was open and he didn’t pass it to me.’ The end result to all of this is that we brought you here to be winning basketball players or you wouldn’t be here. That’s your DNA or you would not be in this program. At the end of the day, you have to produce regardless of how you feel and how you think. There are moments out there when they’re second-guessing themselves. And for all of you guys to really understand this, coaching doesn’t start when guys are playing well. Anybody can coach a team when everything is going hunky dory; it’s when things are bad, it’s when adversity hits, it’s when kids have self-doubt, it’s when the ball doesn’t go in the hole and the kid doesn’t believe it’s going in the hole. How does he fight through that? Are you helping him through that? That’s what we do as coaches. That’s what Coach Cal has traditionally done and he’s continuing to do. It’s to do everything in his power to give his guys a chance to win a game, but more importantly play a certain way that gets you out of a rut.”
On how they will determine each player’s minutes …
“I guess we’ll just, when a guy is tired, if a group has it going on, if there are five guys on the court and they have a great momentum in the game, we’ll let them stay a little longer and just play it by ear and play it by feel.”
On how guys are taking advantage of the rotations …
“Well, when you are doing a rotation, you are guaranteed certain minutes. So at the 17-minute mark, there is going to be three guys that are coming in. Well, the group on the court may be playing bad. They may need to come out in one minute. So we’ve allowed them to stay out there a little longer, so that would be one way of taking advantage of those minutes.”
On the size advantage against Auburn …
“I think our advantages are going to be our length, our athleticism. They are not a tall team. They are basically, it looks like, three or four guards and a forward. Their tallest guy is 6-7, 6-8 that is playing minutes. We have to take advantage of that. That means offensive rebounding, that means stuff around the baskets we have to be strong. We have to be the aggressor. We have to go after them. We really have to go out and play desperate basketball and confident basketball, which is really important.”
On what Nick Richards needs to do become more of a factor …
“I just think Nick needs to play confidently. Another way of saying it is get out of your own self’s way. You’re trained. You are walking in the games, playing a good game. So what happens when you step on the court. You’ve been trained, you prepared, you know you worked hard, you put your time in. What is happening whenever you step on that court – and it is not just for Nick; it’s for any kid – if you will put your work in, the hours and the days before we play our game and you are feeling good about yourself, what happens when you are in the battle? What changed in your mind mentally that made you have self-doubt. That’s what the challenge is with him. He’s a good player and he needs to go out there and believe in him the way we do.”
On if Wenyen Gabriel needs to take more shots …
“Well, Wenyen is one of our veteran players and Wenyen is a good player and he gives us everything he has. When you look over the last four or five games, I think he is averaging two or three shots. He is a kid that can make jump shots for us. We desperately need shooting. He can do that, so we gotta get him on the floor. And it’s not on Wenyen; the other guys when he’s open to get him the ball in his shooting pocket so he can relax and shoot the ball. Really that simple.”
On having to use different teaching techniques for the younger players through their struggles …
“No question, it is definitely different. I mean, what Quade Green needs is different than what Nick needs. What PJ (Washington) needs is different than what Quade needs. What Jarred (Vanderbilt) needs is different than what PJ needs. What Kevin Knox needs is different. They all have these mental makeups. No player is the same and they all have insecurities. They all have self-doubt. Our jobs are to make sure that they understand they are good enough or we would have never recruited you.”
On trying to ease them through this difficult phase …
“We are trying to get them to believe, and I think it is more than just massage them. I think you have to hold each young person accountable. You have to make sure that you love them, that you – I hate to say the word but – hit them in the face but hit them with reality. That means challenge them, get after their butts. When you are not playing hard, when you’re tired, that’s not acceptable, and we are going to get after you for that. For you to miss free throws when we shoot hundreds of free throws every day, that’s not acceptable. That means there is mental block that is allowing to not believe you are going to make this free throw and you’re missing. Why? We are going to challenge you on that. We are going to challenge you as a freshman to think like a senior. We are going to challenge you as a college player to think as a professional player. That’s what we do here.”
On Coach Cal coaching against Bruce Pearl …
“I think Cal wants to beat everybody he plays against. I think Cal respects Bruce Pearl. He’s a really good coach. He has a well-coached team. Their team has come together through adversity, and it’s a tribute to him the way they’re playing. Coach Cal respects that, but with that being said, is there a difference between coaching against Rick Barnes and Bruce Pearl? Probably in the back of his mind, but at the end of the day he wants to beat all of them.”
On if the staff references the 2011 and 2014 seasons …
“We’ve told them. Cal has done a great job of explaining historically what teams have been similar coming down the stretch, losing three of four, and then they clicked. Having adversity and then all of a sudden you figure it out and you go out and you fight for 40 minutes. You change the landscape of where the program is and where you are as a player and where we are as a team. This team is capable. This team is more than capable even though they’re young. We’re not using youth as an excuse; we just need them to fight, to not give up four, five-minute stretches of lackluster basketball. If you can do that, you give us a winning chance.”
On Shai Gilgeous-Alexander being a leader …
“Shai has been a leader. Shai has come out and his character and his will to win has been really good. He is a leader, not by his words, because young kids don’t – you know, they’re friends. They’re not respecting Shai more than they respect themselves. But the way he plays on the court, I think those guys love Shai. I think they respect Shai, and that’s more important than following Shai – the fact that they respect him as a player and they want to be with him in the battle.”
Kentucky Players
#3, Hamidou Diallo, Fr., G
On what he has seen of UK on film …
“We just weren’t playing with energy, including myself. We didn’t play with energy and we weren’t playing as a team. We weren’t playing as one unit and it’s something we’re going to have to get back to. We’re just going to have to all identify ourselves and just all have to play with a different level of energy. That’s the biggest takeaway that I see, is playing with energy and trying to play together.”
On whether they realize they aren’t good enough to overcome stretches of bad play …
“Yeah, 100 percent. We’ve seen it multiple times. We’re not good enough to let any team just come out and score a bunch of baskets on us, hit a bunch of shots and think that we’re going to be able to play our way back every game. We’re just not that good.”
On whether it looks different on film than it feels in games …
“Yeah, definitely. It looks terrible on the film, to be honest. We all look terrible, including myself, and it’s just things we’re going to have to get better at. We see it on the film now and now it’s all about correcting it.”
On how much size can be an advantage against Auburn …
“They’re not very tall, but they play really hard. So it makes up for itself. They play really hard and we’re just going to have to go out there and compete. With length or without length, we’re going to have to play. They’re going to be there trying to battle us, playing really aggressive and they’re a good team. They’re capable of beating us and I think they’re the best team in the conference right now. So it’s a really big game for us right now and we’re just going to have to come out and try to fight for the whole game. All 40 minutes.”
On his recent play …
“It’s been a roller coaster for me. It’s been up and down and I’ve still been trying to identify myself within this team. I haven’t been playing well, have been playing terrible on defense and I just need to pick it up. I need to pick it up to a different level of play for myself and for this team.”
On whether offensive droughts have affected their defense …
“Yeah, I would say that. We go through offensive droughts, but our defense should remain the same throughout the whole game no matter what’s going on on the offensive end, is how I view. Me myself, I have to do a much better job on defense and a much better job on offense.”
#0, Quade Green, Fr., G
On their mental state in the midst of a losing streak …
“It’s hard for us, but we always gotta go for the next game, really. Just focus on this game and try to get the W tomorrow.”
On playing against a ranked team on the road …
“We’re getting ready for March, so this type of environment—you never know where you might end up in March, what environment you might play at. So games like this, another good team we’re going against, it’s going to be a good thing.”
On how to play the way they did the last five minutes at A&M …
“It has to be every game, every minute of the game.”
On what that’s about playing desperate …
“Yeah, we gotta play more desperate, really, and more aggressive. I think sometimes we (become) too much of a passive team, really. We stop being aggressive sometimes. We’ve gotta be passive and aggressive at the same time.”
On Auburn’s guards …
“They’re pretty good. All of them are good, actually. They all can shoot deep, drive, pass to each other, create for each other. We’ve got our hands full with this team.”
On how well he’s done at taking ownership of the team …
“My aspect, I think I’ve done a poor job. Poor job trying to get the team together. Ever since we lost to Texas A&M, as a team we talked together so we’ve been on the same page ever since. Ever since that loss talking on the bus ride, we’ve been on the same page now.”
On what that talk was like …
“We’ve just gotta get back to our winning selves, really. I don’t think anybody on this team really lost three in a row in their previous years of playing basketball. It’s just a hard thing for all of us, even Coach Cal. We’ve gotta come out with some fight.”
On whether leadership can come from individuals or if it needs to be a team thing …
“It’s gotta be a group thing. That’s the only way you’re going to win a national championship, with the group. Not just one player.”
