Kentucky coach John Calipari
On overcoming a slow start …
“We kept calling them over. I said, ‘You’re in the game. Can you imagine? You stemmed the tide.’ The thing that I can’t do for these kids: There’s experiences that they’ve gotta live that I cannot talk them through. When you’re playing all freshmen—I’ll make that statement again: all freshmen—there’s experiences that they have to go through. One of them’s being down 11-0, on the road, to a team that was so hyped to play this game that it was crazy. The second thing: We’re starting to figure out, and especially me—I just told them, I said, ‘We struggled a little bit early. We weren’t where we needed to be. And then we added Jarred (Vanderbilt). And it took us another three weeks. Now we’ve settled in.’ About 10 days ago, I had a meeting and gave them their roles. ‘This is your role on this team. Can you do it? Because if you can’t, I can’t play you. And if you need to do more, I’m not playing you. This is your role.’ And I went right around the room and they were all committed. ‘Are we committed to this?’ Now they still challenge me at times and not—here’s what it is: A guy misses three shots. He doesn’t want to take a fourth one. He has to. You can’t drive it and get it blocked or turn it over because you did not want to shoot the ball. Your job is to shoot it. We’ll try to rebound your miss, or make it. We still fight that. I’ll tell you, I’m proud. To be able to come in here, this is a hard place to play, the environment. Thank God it rained like it did, probably kept some people away, but it was, you know—for us to do this as a young team.”
On whether he has found a crunch-time lineup …
“Well here’s what I’ve done: I’ve done away with the rotation, because everybody took advantage. They just did what they wanted to do. They know they were going in. So we have no rotation now. What I’m doing is if a guy’s playing well, he’s staying in as long as he can. ‘Please sub yourself and I’ll get you back in.’ And I’ll ride the guys who are playing. It’s that time of the year. I just gotta ride with the guys that are getting it done. After the game, I told Hami (Diallo), ‘Hami, we need you so stay with it. I had to coach to win this game. Stay with it. Everybody in here believes in you.’ The team hugged him and clapped, ‘We need you, Hami.’ ‘But you gotta keep—just focus on how hard you’re working and your attitude about getting better and we’re with you.’ But, again, I gotta coach the game to win and I thought Quade (Green) and Shai (Gilgeous-Alexander) were good out there.”
On what changed with rebounding …
“Jarred (Vanderbilt) and PJ (Washington) went in and then we rebounded. Someone says, ‘If you want to rebound better, recruit better rebounders.’ How about that?”
On their offensive efficiency …
“We’re getting better because we’ve settled in on how we’re playing. There were times we looked confused. You know why? They were. I just tried to make it clear how we’re playing and why we’re playing the way we’re playing. A lot of this was on me. When you’re playing freshmen, you can’t blame them. Their terminology, they don’t know. I mean, I said this one, a 1960 term: ‘I want you to play fast, but don’t be in a hurry.’ ‘What?’ That’s from ’60s and the ’70s and the ’80s. ‘Play fast, but don’t be in a hurry.’ And I heard them whispering, ‘What is he talking about?’ These kids, this is all new stuff. I’ve said, most of this is on me to figure out and I’m slowly starting to figure out this team and I’m happy with the direction we’re going, but this league is a bear. Arkansas is an NCAA Tournament team and probably I’m going to guess a top six or seven seed. Now they gotta finish and win some games from here on, but we’re playing all these teams and it’s like, ‘Holy cow, this league.’ “
On what changed defending the 3 in the second half …
“OK, they got four 3s on offensive rebounds that we didn’t go get balls and they kicked them out. So four of the eight and then the last one was the 3 at the buzzer where I made a mistake. I said switch. As soon as I saw it coming, I said, ‘Why did I do that?’ and poor Sacha (Killeya-Jones) got stuck up there and there’s no way he could play him. So those were five of the eight 3s they made at half. Offensive rebound, kick out; offensive rebound, kick out; 50-50 ball, kick out. They had four of those. In the second half we rebounded, so now it was tougher for them.”
On the edges of the late-game lineup he used …
“Well when you have Quade out there you got now Shai, Quade. You got scorers. Kevin Knox. And one of our issues was we weren’t scoring the ball. I just went back to, we’re worried about defense—unless we’re holding people to 32 points, we can’t win. So let’s look at an offensive team and let’s see if we can get them to defend a little bit. Just guard somebody and I think we’re getting better.”
On creating open-court opportunities …
“It’s what we have to be. We have to get some easy baskets and we have to fly. Now I’m going to tell you: They get out on misses and makes as good as anybody in the country and we worked for two days. Throw it up and fly back. Turn and run as fast as you can. I thought we did a pretty good job today of that.”
PJ Washington
On how they turned it around …
“We just started driving the ball, getting easy offensive rebounds and just playing through the inside and we made some jumpers too. So we got back in the game.”
On what Calipari was saying when they were down 11-0 …
“That we gave up two 3s and just drive the ball. And we did that.”
On their improved 3-point defense in the second half …
“Cal came in at halftime and told us they made too many 3s. That was our main focus on the defensive end. We tried to force them to get to the basket and jump straight up and just try to get the rebound.”
On playing at Arkansas …
“They’re a good team. They play hard. They stayed with us in the first half. They were making shots and we just tried to take them off the 3-point line in the second half and I feel like we did a great job of that and we just came here and got the W.”
On their versatility when Knox, Washington and Vanderbilt are on the floor together …
“We feel like we can switch every position, especially when it’s Shai and Wenyen with us also. We feel like we can all guard the one through five so we try to do a good job. When they screen, we try to switch and then also on dribble handoffs we try to switch too. And we can all rebound. It’s great having us five out there on defense.”
On how much weight is off their shoulders now …
“We weren’t really worried about that. On the four-game losing streak, we just tried to come in and get better. I feel like we learned from that and obviously in the past two games we played great coming off of it.”
Kevin Knox
On the importance of Shai Gilgeous-Alexander in the second half …
“Yeah, he played good in the second half. That’s what we need him to do. He’s a point guard. He’s gotta make the decisions and the ball’s in his hands. Tonight, he did a great job at the end finding people in the lane, finishing at the rim and that’s what we need from him at the end of the game because the ball’s in his hands.”
On how much of a groove he’s in …
“Coach, he’s basically saying that I gotta put the ball in the basket and play some defense and rebound the ball. He’s putting me in some more baseline runners and some more stuff to get me to spots where I like. I’ve been in the gym so I’m just hitting some shots now, just trying to get better defensively and get better rebounding so I can help my team as much as possible.”
On playing 38 minutes …
“That’s a lot of minutes. Being in shape. I do a lot of running at practice. We do a lot of running as a team in practice. So being able to stay up to my game with all those minutes, I gotta do what my team needs me to do. If I need a breather, I’ll come out. But the timeouts and all that stuff, the quick breather, that kind of helps out a lot. I just try to do what my team needs me to do to win.”
Jarred Vanderbilt
On their rebounding …
“Mainly we just want to crash the boards and dominate the boards every game. I feel like we had that advantage just considering how long and strong we are down in the post. Any missed shot, one of us should have a hand on it.”
On how much his confidence has grown …
“Each game I feel like I’ve gotten more confident. Just kind of getting into the flow of the game and just letting the game come to me. Each game I gain more experience and gain more confidence as well.”
On whether Calipari has settled on a crunch-time lineup …
“In practice we try different lineups for different situations in the game. I feel like that helped us in late-game situations because the last couple weeks we’ve been working on that and it’s starting to show late in the games.”
On whether he likes playing the five …
“I just like helping my team win and being productive. If that’s at the one, two, three, four, five, I’m capable of playing that. I just want to do that to help my team win.”
On how much more settled they are …
“We settled down a lot better. Like I said, in practice, we went with different lineups, different sessions. So everybody played with everybody, kind of know where they like the ball and just get a feel for everybody. I feel like through each practice and through each game we’ve gotten better in late-game situations. We’ve kind of been more poised going down the stretch and it’s helped us at the end of the games.”
