Head Coach John Calipari
On how well they competed …
“They did good. We made strides today. What you have, again, we get a lead and a guy has a shot and because he hasn’t made one he drives it out of bounds baseline. You have a wide-open shot. Guys like Wenyen (Gabriel), who I think are pretty good shooters don’t make a shot, layup—well, he made some dunks—not a jump shot, not a 3, not a free throw and we have our chance to win the game. We madke some dumb, inexperienced plays down the stretch. We made strides. I kind liked that smaller team. And they’re not small: 6-9, 6-9, 6-9, 6-9, maybe. I kind of liked that team in there. You hold this team to 36 percent and 29 from the 3 when they’re shooting 50 and 45 and you outrebound them on their court, only have six turnovers the second half, which is about that number. But again, (Mustapha) Heron, left, left, left on the same guy and they score eight straight points and we miss all these shots. I feel for them. Poor Hami (Diallo). He’s making strides and getting better. He needed that 3 to drop. And that thing went (all around the rim). We would have been up seven and it just didn’t go. I feel bad for him. I told him, ‘Just keep working, man.’ But he looked rattled out there and I just said, ‘We gotta win the game.’ You gotta worry about egos later when you’re just trying to win a game. Auburn, terrific team. They fight, they scramble, they come up with balls and if you give them a chance to make 3s they make them. And then the first half, I lost my mind. We came into the game: guard the 3 and we’re not fouling. They had 31 points out of (39), whatever they had at halftime, from the line and from the 3. And I look at my team, ‘Is anybody listening to me on this?’ We went in and they threw out for 3. We did well for a while, but—look, we’ll just come back. We got another tough game. We got Alabama, who’s on a win streak and beating everybody’s brains in and now we got them. The league is not what it’s been and now you have no room—we don’t have any room for error and as a coach I gotta keep them going and just get to work and say, ‘How do we get better and what do we do to try to turn this around?’ Good news is I’ve done this for 30 years. Haven’t had one of these for a while. It’s probably good for the soul. I wish it was good for someone else’s soul, not mine.”
On whether he’s concerned about making the tournament …
“I got one thought: Let’s just try to win the next game. Just win a game. I really believe if we win a game we’ll get going. I’ve had teams in this kind of mode that we’re in, but the league was different that we could go get a league game somewhere and we knew, ‘OK, finally.’ Well, guess what. Did Vanderbilt win tonight? I mean, there’s none here. There are no—you better come and play. And the other thing is, everybody gives us their best shot. There’s no one that’s going to not play against Kentucky, especially if they think they got a chance to beat you for the first time in six years. Now all of a sudden, it’s, you know.”
On what he wants to see out of this team …
“We fought today, so—well, let me say this: They had three loose balls in the first half that we didn’t get and they were in our hands that they threw out for 3s. You’re not going to win. There were some plays down the stretch, again, our ball, their ball. They’re coming up with them. But we fought today. I thought we did. I’ll watch the tape. We did some good stuff. We’re trying to figure out again how we need to play. I like where we have a different kind of team in there and how we’re playing. I think we’re getting closer. We’ll just see.”
On whether they fully capitalized on their height advantage …
“Again, we missed some there too. The one-footer, it was a four-point game. It wasn’t like nine. It was four. Make that, it’s two, let’s see what happens. We missed it. So we did do some good stuff, but we did miss it. One of our things was that we should be able to get these guys near that rim. I was telling them, ‘Don’t turn it over. Shoot it and let us try to rebound it.’ But they do a good job. They front and they jam you. They did it to us.”
On their development in late-game situations …
“Again, late-game situation, you gotta do what the team needs you to do. If they need you to shoot the ball, you gotta shoot it. Wenyen (Gabriel) took all open shots. They were wide open. Just didn’t make any, but he had to shoot that. If he walked or did something else, I would have lost my mind. He shot them and missed them. Hopefully next game, get in the gym, spend some time at night or in the morning, build your own confidence and go from there.”
On why Sacha Killeya-Jones didn’t play …
“I told him prior to the game I’d probably go small. So I told him prior, I said, ‘Nick (Richards), you and Sacha, I’m just going to tell you right now, if I think we’re better playing a smaller lineup…’ Because they’re not the physical—like what Texas A&M is is physical. So those two guys being there really bothered these guys. Those two are not that way. So now all of a sudden, their physique, Auburn’s, they way they play against those two I didn’t like that. But I liked PJ (Washington) and I liked Jarred (Vanderbilt).”
On Vanderbilt and whether he played the way he wants him to …
“Yes. Yup.”
On seeming composed during this losing streak …
“I’m old. I’ve been through just about everything. I just say, I’m not fazed by it, I’m not cracking. When you say that, this isn’t about me, OK? This season is not going to change anything about me, but my concern is I got a bunch of young kids that at times don’t listen, they don’t trust. And I told them last night, I failed them. I haven’t built enough trust where when I talk to them, ‘I’m going to do what this man says.’ They’re not that. I don’t know if it’s outside stuff, but I told them I’ve failed them. But they’ve also failed each other. Because they don’t play for each other. They play like—again, if a guy gets eight straight points scored on him, do you really want to win? If you want to win, that’s just not happening, but you’re not concerned about that. You’re (concerned about) how you’re playing. We have to get by it. But I’ll say it again: My concern is these kids. And I’m not worried about record, my record, my whatever you want to say. I’m old now. We get on a run and we go to the Final Four this year, it doesn’t change me, but I’ll tell you what. It helps these kids. We go the wrong way and we don’t get it going it’s affecting these kids. I am fine, which is why again, there are some ways that I’ve failed these guys and there are some ways they’ve failed each other. All that comes back to trust and being together and knowing that this is about them. I don’t do this—it’s not about me. I don’t want it to be about me. I’ve had enough stuff written and said, most of it bad, about me so I don’t need any more. I’m good. Let me go on and just try to help these kids.”
On whether he believes a Final Four run is possible …
“Yeah, I do. I do. You saw that team out there. If that’s a No. 1 seed and we’re on their court and we got a four or six-point lead with a chance, but everybody’s gotta play for us. And again, the other thing, we gotta make some shots. This is the game of basketball. When you’re wide open, if you don’t think you can make a 3, make a 2. We just gotta do that.”
PJ Washington
On their mindset …
“Right now we’re just focused on our next opponent, which is Alabama. We’re just trying to go in and get better every day in practice and just trying to fight 40 minutes. I feel like if we keep doing that we’ll eventually get a win.”
On the biggest issue tonight …
“I feel like we played great the whole game. We tried to play 40 minutes. We did that and it came down to fouls at the end and they made free throws.”
On whether they had an advantage inside …
“Yeah, we felt like we were bigger than them on the inside so we just tried to pound it in and get easy buckets down there.”
On the zone they played in the second half …
“Personally, I felt the zone really helped us, when we went in our tandem. It got us some stops and we eventually got up on the scoreboard, like up four points I think. We tried to stick with that.”
On whether they’re worried about making the NCAA Tournament …
“Right now our main focus is just on our next opponent, just trying to get back on the winning column. I feel like if we work hard at practice every day we’ll be all right.”
On what broke down once they led by four …
“I feel like—I forgot what it was, but they scored some buckets. We fouled and they started getting free throws and eventually they got back up and we couldn’t get back from there.”
On what makes Auburn so good …
“They make shots and they make free throws and if you foul them they’re going to make a lot of free throws, they’re going to make a lot of 3s. Our game plan was to stop that.”
On Kevin Knox going quiet late …
“Kev was being really aggressive in the first half with a lot of curls, getting easy buckets. We tried to go to him in the second half, but I don’t remember what happened. Obviously it didn’t work out. We just gotta get back in practice and just work on stuff like that.”
On whether he was comfortable coming off the bench …
“Yeah. I’m just trying to win. I don’t care if I come off the bench or if I don’t play, so it really doesn’t matter to me.”
