John Calipari
Wenyen Gabriel
Sacha Killeya-Jones

Nashville, Tennessee

Kentucky – 86, Alabama – 63

JOHN CALIPARI: That was a good ball game. We’re a team that, if we make threes like that, that’s what we can do to people. We’re not a team that that’s what we live and die with. But Wenyen was unbelievable today. But I also — I got to tell you, Sacha, who hadn’t had the opportunity, has been playing behind some pretty good players, now his chance is there. And I’ll tell you, I’m watching him play, both on defense, offense, rebounding the ball. He’s fighting. He makes us different.

And Hami is coming around. He made some plays today, some threes. They’re starting to come together. 20 assists, 10 turnovers, big for us. We’re a young, inexperienced team to play in a game like that, especially when they were pressing in the end and still end up with 10 turnovers, pretty big deal.

Q. Wenyen, obviously, you were on fire today. What did you do differently in terms of preparation, and when did you know that you were in the zone.
WENYEN GABRIEL: I think I was in the zone after probably my third three. Preparation today, Vanderbilt’s been off a little bit. The coach has been telling me everybody needs to give more here and there. I came in with more of a level of focus. I just let it fly. Teammates trusted in me, and shots fell today.

Q. Wenyen, there was a moment after your — I think it was your seventh three when you guys went back in your time-out and your teammates were pushing you around. You were throwing your hands up, like trying to pump up the crowd. I think they were chanting like Go Big Blue. Could you just take us through that moment. Like how big Big Blue Nation has been for you guys this tournament?
WENYEN GABRIEL: That moment was great. It just shows how much appreciation they’ve got for us, all the support. You could feel the energy in the crowd, almost like it was a home game out there. I was trying to get them riled up to help us push through that game.

Q. Sacha, it seems like in the second half, right from the start, you came in with a lot of production. Was there anything at halftime or anything that was said that you recognized that caused the change for you.
SACHA KILLEYA-JONES: Not really. Just trying to do what I could do to help my team and help us win the game. My teammates did a great job of finding me and creating shots for me. That comes along with it when you just try to play within the team.

Q. Wenyen, have you ever had a game like that where you just couldn’t miss and kept taking shots and still making them?
WENYEN GABRIEL: I’ve had a game like that before. Obviously, not in a Kentucky uniform yet. That was great to have one of these today for my confidence going forward. We’ve got some big games coming up ahead, trying to bring home some hardware tomorrow and move on to the NCAA Tournament.

Q. Hami, we notice that you’re smiling a lot more on the court. It seems like you’re having a lot more fun. Is there a moment this year when the switch kind of flipped and the game got a lot more enjoyable for you?
HAMIDOU DIALLO: Just going through adversity is tough, obviously. At first when adversity hit me, it was tough for me. I was having tough times. Having a team like this and coaches that just trusted in me and just told me to keep pushing and keep trying to work, and one day it’s just going to turn around. Ever since then, I’ve just been smiling and happy to be around these guys and just happy to be playing the game I love.

Q. John, when one of your players is making shots like the way Wenyen was, do you change the game plan any or just stick with what was working?
JOHN CALIPARI: Well, what’s happened is with Wenyen playing as one of five guys, we now have four or five three-point shooters. So he can just space the court, and the guy guarding him is usually a bigger guy, and he’s not going to go out there, and that’s what happened today. He was basically at the five. He’s not a five, obviously. But that’s what we put him at because of his length. When we go with that lineup with him and P.J. and Kevin Knox, I mean, we are 6’9″, 6’9″ or 6’10” and 6’8″, but that’s not our big lineup. So he gets to play against the five.

We try to put him in some pick-and-rolls and get him a couple more, but they kind of switched those. So that wasn’t available.

Q. John, you guys shot 64 percent and over 20 assists. How sustainable is offensive performance like this at that level for the championship game and then moving forward in the NCAA Tournament?
JOHN CALIPARI: Well, it’s probably not sustainable, but let me say this: The people that have watched this, do we rely on three-point shots to win? We don’t. If we make — wow, we made 12. Then we’re probably going to win by 20. If we make 6 or 7, we’re okay. But many games we made two or three and still won because we don’t play like the three ball is. If it’s there, we’ll take it. It spaces the court.

You know, you have teams that must take 10 or 11 or 12 or they’re going to lose. We’re kind of the other way, and I kind of like it being that way. And to be honest, most of my teams here at Kentucky have been that way.

Q. Coach, for a team that’s so young, I mean, talk about you guys’ ability to have 20 assists on 27 field goals and the attitude that says about your team.
JOHN CALIPARI: They’re growing up. The best thing that happened to my team, not me personally, was the four losses in a row. Me, I was ready to jump off a bridge. But I knew and I told them, I’ve been through this before. They needed that. They needed to be told you’re not good enough, and you’re not going to do this by yourself. You’ve got to unpack your bags, and let’s get this together as a team and figure this stuff out.

And the second thing was they have to learn to conquer themselves. Things have to go wrong, and you’ve got to take stock and say it’s me. See, around them, everybody will say it’s the coach, it’s another player. He doesn’t take him out when he does that. He just takes — and they’re hearing that, and they’re trying to deal with that. They’ve got to conquer themselves, which is take responsibility for how you’re playing. Take responsibility for who you are right now.

The other thing is the self discipline of being on time, going to every class on time. Mainly because you’re disciplined off the court, you’ll be that way on the court. I’ve never in 35 years seen a guy undisciplined off the court be disciplined on the court. It doesn’t happen. It just doesn’t. So they’ve got to conquer themselves, and it’s taken time. And I knew it would take time. I said it at the beginning of the year, this is going to be ugly before it gets good.

What you’re seeing right now is these kids have committed to each other. They’re working really hard. But I don’t know what tomorrow brings. It could be six assists like we got at Florida. How about that? And 15 turnovers. Why didn’t you pass to each other? I don’t know. I mean, what happened? We were just playing — they’re inexperienced, and they want to revert. They want to go back to what they want to do, which is easier for them.

The stuff we’re doing is really hard. You’ve got to sacrifice. You’re going to be less, but be more by being less. You’re going to take less and be more. You’re going to share more, you’re going to be about your teammates, and when it all ends, everybody’s going to say, wow, you can really play. That’s what is just hard when you’ve got all these young kids, and then everybody, when they’re this talented — and this team is more talented than everybody’s giving them credit for.

And because we’re so separated, it became, this is my least talented team. That’s not true. This team has talent. It doesn’t matter if you’re not like that. It doesn’t. If anybody’s playing for themselves, when a team comes together, that’s obvious. That guy can’t be in or this guy can’t be in. He’s playing for himself when a team gets to where we are.

Tomorrow will be hard. Three games in three days, tough. We lose an hour?

Q. We did.
JOHN CALIPARI: What time’s the game?

THE MODERATOR: 12:00 noon.

Q. John, you not only coached the team on the court, but it seems like you’ve spent an inordinate amount of time playing psychologist, psychotherapist. Has this been your most challenging team in terms of dealing with that aspect? And how, obviously, important do you think that is to the success of the team?
JOHN CALIPARI: Here’s the thing I can never lose sight of: I’m trying to prepare these kids for the rest of their lives. Some of them will be with me one year. Now, they go to class. They’re getting 30 credits when they leave if they stay one year. Most of them are B students. We’ve graduated 17 players. We have three players in the NBA with college degrees. We have four guys that are coming back that left early. But my job is, again, to teach them to conquer themselves, to teach them to be great teammates.

Pat Riley said to me, you know what, your kids come into this league, and they’re great teammates. Yeah, they all had to share. They couldn’t be the man by themselves. They had to be one of five, six, seven — Anthony Davis, Michael Kidd. How about Karl Townes? Played 21 minutes a game. Devin Booker to this day is still mad that I didn’t start him. He said, yeah, it would have been senior night. I wonder if he would have started me. I texted him, and he didn’t hit me back. He’s mad.

But my job is to prepare them to go have success, and I’m just trying to go win the next basketball game, I’m cheating these kids. And if we had to lose some games and I’ve got to deal with it to get that right, then we’ll lose some games, and I’ll deal with it.

This team, the youngest, most inexperienced team I’ve ever attempted to coach and at times the maturity level is — there’s something to be desired there at times. Basically, I’m saying they’re young, 18s and 19s. They’re very young, and they haven’t been — they’ve never been coached this way. They’ve never been told no.

You know what? I get tired. I don’t get frustrated. I was in bed last night at 8:45, had a great night, woke up. My wife thinks I’m — what’s wrong with you? She says, I’m not getting old. You’re getting old.

I said, Well, do what I’m doing. You’re over here petting the dogs. I have to go with this thing here. You’d be tired too.

Avery Johnson
John Petty
Collin Sexton

St. Louis, Missouri

Kentucky – 86, Alabama – 63

AVERY JOHNSON: First of all, I’m so unbelievably proud of our guys. When we got on the plane to come to St. Louis, there are a lot of unknowns about kind of our future, especially in the NCAA Tournament, but the perseverance that they’ve showed this year and especially over the last 48, 72 hours, for what I’m told, we’ve played ourselves hopefully in the tournament.

But I’m proud of them. They’ve persevered. They’ve showed a lot of character, togetherness, teamwork. We’ve got guys diving on the floor for balls more than we ever have, taking charges, moving the ball on offense, getting the ball to the hot player. So I can go on and on.

Give Kentucky credit. They shot the lights out of it. Gabriel had a career night from behind the three-point line. We were a little bit better offensively in the second half. We struggled a little bit in the first half. But give them credit. Cal does a really good job with his young guys. We both have young teams.

I thought — not making the excuse, we just didn’t have the energy in the first half like we normally have. I don’t know if it’s because we played three in a row. We’re a pretty well-conditioned team. But it just took us a while to get in gear today.

But I’m awfully proud of our guys. We got a lot of basketball left in us.

Q. For both players, playing three games in three days, how much of a toll does that take, especially against a tough and physical team like Kentucky?
COLLIN SEXTON: I feel like it takes a little bit of toll on us, on our bodies. But we have a good trainer who makes sure that our bodies are good to continue to play at the high level that we play at and compete. So I feel like we’ll be all right.

JOHN PETTY: Just like Coach said, we’re a well-conditioned team. But it did take a little toll on us, three games back to back versus three great teams. But like he said, we’ve still got a lot of basketball left.

Q. John, you’ve sort of been struggling to find your shot away from home, and then in the second half it seemed to come to you. Any reason that it did, and is it something that can carry over into next week?
JOHN PETTY: I had a bad few games where I shot the ball well. But as a shooter, every shooter going to go through a drought. Every shooter has bad games. So I just kept my confidence and just kept shooting and doing what Coach told me, and it finally came to me.

Q. Collin, just how much of a difference do you feel like it made not having Donta in there? And how much of a difference when Donta isn’t in there?
COLLIN SEXTON: I feel like Donta is a big part of our offense as well as our defense because he blocks shots. Also, when he gets the rebounds, he throws it to us and runs the floor. I feel like he helps both ends of the floor. Without him, it’s pretty tough. But Galin and Alex Reese and Daniel, they all stepped up tonight, but we just came up short.

Q. Collin, I’m sure this is disappointing today, but how would you sum up the three days in St. Louis for yourself and your team?
COLLIN SEXTON: Honestly, I feel like, if it wasn’t for my teammates giving me the ball in the right areas and having the confidence in me, then all my personal success probably wouldn’t have been here. So I feel like all the credit goes to them and the coaches.

Q. Coach, what did the doctors tell you about Donta, and what can you share with us and what’s his condition?
AVERY JOHNSON: He’s in a concussion protocol. We think that he’s going to be okay, but he’s resting. He spent some time in the locker room. Then he came out at the end and tried to fire the guys up a little bit on the bench. Fortunately, he’s going to be fine. He’s responded well, but he’s day-to-day right now.

Q. First, a followup on Donta. Is it fair to say that you guys have almost a week before we would play again, that there’s optimism that he would be available for the NCAA Tournament?
AVERY JOHNSON: Yeah, we’re very optimistic.

Q. And second question, they finished 85 percent from the field in the second half. When’s the last time, if ever, that you dealt with a team getting that hot during the course of a game?
AVERY JOHNSON: We got hot in our last game in the second half, and we played outstanding basketball. They got hot in the second half today and made a lot of threes. Sometimes you’ve just got to take your hats off to them. I don’t know if I’ve ever coached against a guy that’s got seven from the three-point line on any level.

But we were scrambling. We cut the lead down to about nine or ten points at one point. They kept us on our heels by making threes. And sometimes we were there in their faces, and sometimes we weren’t. But I like the way offensively we got going a little bit in the second half. We just didn’t have much offense. Our energy wasn’t at a high level of where we needed it to be in the first half to compete in this game.

Q. Coach, overall, how do you assess your team’s play this tournament and where that leaves you for a potential tournament game down the road?
AVERY JOHNSON: You know what, after we won the first game, and especially — I’m going back to the first game when we were up by 12. Sure, we turned the ball over, and they got back in the game and obviously took the lead. But at this point, I really thought in the back of my mind we could win the SEC tournament. I just thought, if we could just get enough energy and get some help off of our bench, that we’ll have a shot.

Then, boy, yesterday with that game, the way we dominated our opponent, especially after losing to them on the road, I was thinking, man, I think we got something.

But Donta, we could have used him today. That’s a guy that will get you 14 points and 10 or 11 rebounds and 5 blocked shots. They were missing Vanderbilt. But I just didn’t think we were going to be as slow offensively as we were, especially against a really good defensive team. But I’m really encouraged by what I saw with our team today. I’m really, really, really encouraged.

I talked to them about the old coach Jim Valvano after the game. I talked to them about his speech at the ten-year anniversary of their 1983 team, and he talked about how their team had a lot of hope. They had big dreams, they loved each other, but more than anything, they persevered. I told them I’m proud of them for persevering.

Q. I don’t know if you heard, but looking to a reaction. Mark Fox got let go by Georgia today.
AVERY JOHNSON: Oh, really? No, I didn’t hear that.

Q. Any thoughts on that?
AVERY JOHNSON: Good man. Good coach. Yeah, very disappointing. When you come into the SEC like I did three years ago, even though we all try to win recruiting battles and we want to win on the floor, there’s a little bit of a brotherhood with the coaches. We spend time two or three times a year at SEC meetings and media days. Obviously, we’re on the road at all of these tournaments. Sometimes when you can go visit these high schools, you form a bond.

I have a really good relationship with Cal. People say, well, why? Why not? I had a great relationship with Nick Saban, who called me before I came on this trip and gave me one really good point about our team. Why not?

But I’m disappointed for Mark, but I’m sure he’ll bounce back. I’m sure he’ll bounce back because he’s a good man and he’s a really good basketball coach.

Q. Coach, you talked about being encouraged. Was part of that the way they got after them at the press in the second half?
AVERY JOHNSON: But I was really encouraged with our practice before we came here. It was very spirited. We had an energy in that first game, like I hadn’t seen before. The way we ran on the break. We got beat up on the boards. And then to be able to win that game and win on yesterday and the way we fought back in the second half.

We had some guys, like Petty, who had been struggling. A.J. Jr. struggled yesterday, and they gave us some good production off the bench there with that run, and that’s a positive.

But our team, they gave us everything they had. Sometime, even when you do, you come up short. But I think we’re well positioned. We haven’t — not a flawless resume. There’s nobody in the country, I think, that has a flawless resume, but, boy, we got some outstanding wins, outstanding wins, and we’ve played in some tough environments. And basically, everything that the committee said was the criteria for being one of the 68 teams, we think we’ve met the criteria. So we’ll see what happens.

Q. Just wanted to follow up on what you said about Coach Saban. What was the advice that he gave you?
AVERY JOHNSON: That’s private. I’m not going to share that with you.

Q. Just thought I’d try.
AVERY JOHNSON: Good try, but that’s totally private. I just want to keep our conversations private. But he’s been very helpful in so many ways. Miss Terry has been helpful to my wife.

You know, you find out a lot about everybody when you’re in a losing streak. You really do find out about everybody. You find out about your friends. You find out about your family. You find out about people in the state, out of the state, alumni, fans, donors, supporters. You find out, man, when you’re in a tough stretch. And we have a group of people that’s in our inner circle, of which coach is one of them, that’s just behind us through thick and thin. Yes, they want us to win every game.

But Greg Byrne, he’s been in the foxhole with me since he arrived, and that’s a great feeling, man, when you have many directors behind you. He calls me all the time during the losing streak, and our president Dr. Bell was showing up at games, even when we weren’t playing great, and I can keep going on and on. That’s what a family is about. That’s what a marriage is about. I’ve been with my wife almost 27 years, and every day is not Sunday. Okay? (Laughter). Or Sunday or sunny. Sometimes it’s partly cloudy, rain, thunderstorms, but you’ve got to hang in there.

That’s what I love about our team, our coaching staff, our administration, and people that really care deeply about what we’re trying to build.