University of Kentucky Basketball Media Conference
Tuesday, November 12 2019
John Calipari
Men’s Media Conference
JOHN CALIPARI: Let me, first of all, congratulate Evansville. Walter (McCarty) and their team deserved to win. If we would have somehow pulled it out, you know, it would have been, kind of wouldn’t even have been fair because they fought us the whole game and they were the tougher team. They executed, they made shots, threes and free throws. My hat is off to them. It’s hard to do that in this building, but they were more ready to play. He had his team better prepared than I had my team.
Q. What do you hope your guys take from this going forward?
JOHN CALIPARI: Well, within the last minute and 20 seconds they had two offensive rebounds where you had a chance to win, but you got to go get balls. And literally we couldn’t, guys were running out. We had, we worked for a month, maybe longer on toughness because I knew that would be a key. And we reverted today. You saw a team that was way tougher than us. Their guards were more physical and tougher. We couldn’t post the ball. We were trying to post the ball. We couldn’t hold position in the post. We couldn’t come off screens, whether it was a ball screen, we didn’t set it, they did. All the toughness. Late getting to rotations, which we haven’t done in two games. Well, we did it about five times and they made us pay. It’s that lesson. Now, I will tell you, part of this is that I’ve had to change practice because we’re practicing with seven and eight guys. That makes it hard. So, I’ve got to figure out a way of, like… Ashton (Hagans), that wasn’t Ashton today. That wasn’t the Ashton that I know. I think when you, you’re not competing every day to bring that out, you’re not going to play that way. That’s on me, not on them. But again, Evansville deserved to win the game in every aspect. They out-rebounded us, they out-toughed us, they made more threes, drove us for layups. I mean, they deserved to win.
Q. I asked Coach McCarty about how against y’all’s athleticism that they were able to get so many straight-line drives to the basket. I think you just alluded to that. Explain just what they were doing that y’all weren’t doing?
JOHN CALIPARI: They were spreading the court and saying, I’m beating this dude on the dribble and they beat him on the dribble. We weren’t in to go out. We were spreading the court out. We weren’t playing the way we play. And then we got better where we moved it in and we made our little run. But again, you have one or two breakdowns where you have a chance to get an offensive rebound, they get it, kick it out and get a three or get it and get fouled or kick it out and drive and layup. They smelled they could win the game and they finished. They finished strong. And we didn’t. This was a great lesson for all of us, including me. I mean, we could say they got outplayed and I could tell you I got out-coached.
Q. I know you’re just saying that, you said Ashton didn’t look like himself today. What was it that Evansville was doing?
JOHN CALIPARI: He’s a little bit injured right now. So, he hasn’t really been practicing. By not being able to really get after it, that’s his game. So, we got to figure out whether we shut it down completely. And I was trying to say, let’s get through this game and take some time, and probably should have had him take the game off. But, you know, we will see. We got a lot of stuff to figure out, to be honest with you.
Q. You say Ashton is injured. Exactly what is he injured with? What’s going on with him?
JOHN CALIPARI: His legs. His leg is bothering him.
Q. Were your turnovers more due to Evansville’s defense or your not doing what you’re supposed to on offense when you had twice as many turnovers as assists?
JOHN CALIPARI: Well, we only had 13 turnovers. That’s not bad. The problem is we weren’t passing the ball to each other. We were just coming down and we were saying post it and the dude twice jacked up threes like it’s high school. Just shoot it. And you’re looking like, really? Like, do you understand we’re in a dog fight here? We came down and did a screen, re-screen, got a layup. We called the same thing. The guy shot a three. Really? Why would you do that? Because I just played high school four months ago. And so we got, you know, you’re expecting your veterans, but Nick (Richards), I mean, the game got physical and he wasn’t as tough as their guy. And that’s bottom line. So he’s got to know that I can’t play that way. I’ve got to be strong and hold my position. Nate (Sestina), same thing. We couldn’t post Nate. We couldn’t get him the ball. So…
Q. In 10 years you’ve not loss one of these pay games at home. Is that just something that’s bound to happen eventually or is there something different about this team that it fell short?
JOHN CALIPARI: Well, if we play like we did today we’ll lose more than one. If you’re not tougher than the other team, and you’re this young, and we’re trying to play eight guys right now because of injury, you better fight like heck. And we did when we played Eastern. Now, Eastern spread the court out a little bit, so we were able to do some things. This team, they kind of packed it in. They forced down pick-and-rolls, they switched a little bit, they kept us out of the lane a little bit better than Eastern did. But, like, we couldn’t post the ball? Like, literally could not, we couldn’t get it to the guys in there where we wanted to go in and let’s get some easy baskets. But this is all, look, again, I’ve done this 35 years and stuff like this happens. You want to grow from it, you want to learn from it. We may look back in a couple weeks and say, this is the greatest thing that ever happened to this team. We also may look back in a couple weeks and say what in the heck? They’re not changing. Because I said it from day one, the whole key to this will be toughness. Toughness doesn’t mean pushing and shoving. Toughness means before I catch the ball I’m working. Before a shot hits the rim, before it hits the rim, I’m moving to go rebound. If I’m getting screened, I’m fighting that screen because I’m tough. And I’m not trying to fight it early to get beat on a back door. We don’t play that way. If I’m in offense and it’s something that they’re playing through me, I will get open because I’m tougher than the guy that’s guarding me. All the stuff, taking a charge, being tough enough late to make free throws, like, to finish off a game. I mean all that stuff. And then for these young kids there’s an expectation that we win every game at home. Okay, you didn’t win this one. There’s an expectation for everybody, our fans and everybody. Every game we play at home we should win. It’s not the case. Either you fight to win the game or you don’t win. And if my team played like this, then they must have thought that I was going to accept it. So that all comes back to me. I don’t ever blame the kids on this kind of stuff. I look at myself and say, okay, what was wrong with the preparation? Okay, we are only practicing with seven, eight guys. Well, how do we make it so that we still get something done and that we don’t have this kind of step way back and almost accept that, you know, I’m getting out-worked today.
Q. Were there any individual positive performances that you saw from any of your guys?
JOHN CALIPARI: I would have to look at the tape. I was just — I was just even — I was really disappointed in the last two offensive rebounds because we had a chance to win the game. But you come up with those balls, and if you look the guards took off. They didn’t even go in there to rebound. And our bigs were running under the rim instead of checking out and creating space. I mean, stuff that we worked on. But a lot of game slippage. And I told them, I told them this a couple days ago, the way I coach is we’re, I don’t ever think about losing until the horn goes off if we won or lost the game. And even today I was thinking, okay, how do we do this? The last play wasn’t run right. And I put Tyrese (Maxey) in a spot he hadn’t been, so he came back and caught the ball and just did what — it wasn’t supposed to be him he was supposed to be up the court. So, there’s things we got to done a there’s ways that I’m going to have to coach and make sure that these guys understand. But I’ll say this, we got great kids. They’re hurting and they should be, but my guess is they will learn from this and understand we can’t be this way. If you don’t guard and rebound you don’t get easy baskets. If you’re getting beat on the bounce you got to figure out, how am I staying in front of these guys. If you’re not ready to play, what was your game preparation like? Like I look at a couple, whatever you did today to get ready for this game, don’t do that again. Did anybody sleep after the shoot around? Did you go back and sleep? Because if you did, you look like you were sleeping today. And I don’t want to say all that to take away from Evansville, because they beat us. This wasn’t us giving them a game, they took it from us. They came into Rupp Arena where not many people win and they won a tough game and I’m, again, happy for Walter, he’s a good man and a terrific coach.
Kentucky Basketball Postgame Quotes
Kentucky vs. Evansville
Rupp Arena – Lexington, Ky.
Nov. 12, 2019
UK Student-Athletes
#3, Tyrese Maxey, Fr., G
On what happened out there tonight…
“We have to get rebounds, we have to stay aggressive. It’s a tough one but we will bounce back.”
On Coach Calipari comments on the team’s lack of toughness…
“Yeah he’s right. We have to get those rebounds down the stretch, I have to make those free throws. Like he said, we just have to be tougher defensively, stand in front of our man, and not leave the corners.”
On Evansville’s play and if it was surprising …
“Not really. They just came downhill at us, and like Coach Cal said we weren’t tough enough to stand in front of our man and get tough rebounds late in the game.”
On how the team needs to bounce back from this game…
“You put this game in the past, you remember it, you take it to the head and you have to go back to work tomorrow. We can’t dwell on it, and we can’t let it be the reason, can’t let it be our season, we have a lot of games ahead and am looking forward to our game next Monday.”
On if the loss is tougher after being ranked #1 in the country…
“I mean losing period is disappointing, whether you were ranked number one or not ranked, we all hate to lose, I know that for a fact , but like I said we are just going to come tomorrow ready to work and bounce back.”
#5, Immanuel Quickley, So., G
On doing anything different in practice this week…
“No, we didn’t. We have a lot of guys banged up but hopefully we can get back to getting our minds right by the next game.”
On playing better…
“I could have helped rebound a little more down the stretch. We missed some key rebounds that I think we needed to get. I’m trying to come out and play as hard as I can every single game, but you can always give more effort.”
On what Evansville did that no other team has done this season…
“They went super small and just started driving the ball which forced us to go small. I don’t think we ever played Keion Brooks Jr. at the five in practice, that was a good coaching adjustment on their part.”
On the challenge with the rebounds tonight…
“We had a couple of guys that didn’t box out. We got so antsy to get rebounds that we all kind of went into the lane including myself, but we just have to make that adjustment, box out and get back to the other fundamentals.”
On this could be the best thing that has ever happened to you…
“I think just like Duke last year, when we got smacked in the face it kind of woke all of us up and we were able to regroup and we’re playing for March and hopefully April.”
#1, Nate Sestina, Gr., F
On how surprising the upset was …
“I said it the other day where a team like this could come out and play harder and they did. I got outplayed today, gave up a bunch of points at the end of the game, couldn’t really guard anybody so I got to take a lot of blame to that and late in the game just not being able to guard guys that are smaller than me.”
On Evansville’s toughness …
“Coach was right, we got out-toughed. I didn’t revert back to what we do in practice, standing straight up. It’s a mental thing for me, just got to be mentally tough late in the game especially when I’m tired and I wasn’t.”
Kentucky Basketball Postgame Quotes
Kentucky vs. Evansville
Rupp Arena – Lexington, Ky.
Nov. 12, 2019
Evansville Head Coach Walter McCarty
Opening statement
“I thought our guys really came in. Actually, a couple days before tonight our guys have been really locked in. Even the Ball State game. Our guys are really starting to pay attention to details and the scouting part of it is really huge for us. Our guys played excellent tonight. I thought we were really connected. All I’ve preached to them is if we are the hardest playing team, the most physical, the most connected, we can win a lot of ball games. Our guys stuck to the game plan and we executed, and we really trusted each other. That’s a big thing for our team, is building trust. It doesn’t matter who gets the floor. Sam (Cunliffe) made his sound. The guy stepped up, took a big charge and he got big rebounds. It was a team win. I’m very proud of our guys and we got to continue to get better and keep having nights like this.”
On what this means to the Evansville program…
“Our players, we got guys who are talented. DeAndre Williams was an ESPN top-100 kid. Sam Cunliffe was a top kid in the country, top 30 and he transferred from Kansas. Artur Labinowicz is a 6’4″ kid as a sophomore, from Coastal Carolina shot 40% and averaged 13 points. K.J. Hall is a veteran senior. K.J. is a 6’5” point guard that can get to the basket. I mean he’s tough as nails. Noah Frederking is a shooter. I mean we’ve got talent. We’ve got guys that can play and the good thing about all these guys, we all complement each other, and they love playing together. They’re a great group, so I don’t know how much this does for us. This is a great win for our program. For our team, we have to say if we come in here and stick together, good things can happen. That’s what we take from this. It felt like us against the world. If we just stick together, anything is possible. Before the game, we showed the clip of “The Pursuit of Happiness” when Will Smith said, “Don’t let anyone tell you, you can’t succeed.” We played that for our guys. No one expected us to come here and play the way we did.”
On what it means to win as a coach instead of winning as a player…
“I don’t think it feels any different. Pulling up to the parking lot and those juices are starting to turn, I felt like I was getting ready to play and good thing I don’t, I still don’t play anymore. The competitive juices start flowing and I’m starting to get excited and you just feel like, “Let’s go.” and I think our kids see that.”
On where this moment ranks compared to his moments as a Kentucky player…
“This is at the top. To be able to come back home and play against the No. 1 team in the country and to be able to perform the way we did. I don’t know if anything else matches this other than winning a national championship. It’s awesome to be able to come here and play on this type of stage. I got a good group of guys, I really do. They love each other and they’re very connected and to bring this group in and be able to do that is just awesome.”
On this game not being a miracle and more about being competitive…
“I think it was competitive game, we just match up really well. Our guys – when I say connected, I’m not saying these guys are close, they are close but we are connecting on the basketball court. We make plays for each other. So in basketball you are taught to rotate, you are taught to help, you are taught to step up and guys try to make tough plays. The difference with our guys is we sometimes get it our own way and we take a tough shot, our guys make the extra pass. They look for each other, it’s like I trust you to make a shot and when I say we are connected, we are connected that way. We knew that Kentucky would pack the paint, we’re going to rotate and if we draw somebody they are coming to block shots. They play with athleticism. So we combat that by ‘ok come try to block it’, move it, move it, move it and see if they make the extra effort. So when I say connected, we are connected that way where it does not matter who is taking the shot as long as it’s a good shot and you are making a play for your teammate.”
On pace of the game and frustrating Kentucky…
“I hope so. I mean we played 9-10 guys and our offensive at times. We are moving, we are moving and there were times we slowed it down a little bit just take time of the clock down because you let those kids get out in transition, you are not stopping them, that is how good they are. They are phenomenal in the half court. We tried to play with some pace and try to see if we could make them make mistakes and we are really good at it. We have gotten really good because of the way we practice. We do not practice more than an hour 30, hour 45 minutes, we go so hard and we go at a quick pace. We do not have any water breaks, we just keep going, everything is up and down so our guys play really fast or are used to it and we have gotten to the point where it is just about making the right play for your teammate and we have been pretty good at it so I think the pace bothered them. They got guys, I think (Tyrese) Maxey, (Ashton) Hagans and one more play 30 minutes a game and at our pace is tough to do.”
On if it’s frustrating that players don’t recognize how good he was…
“I don’t think so. There’s times I put them in place, we play some one on one and I have not lost yet so I got to put them in their place sometimes but to me I don’t talk about myself and career. All I talk about with my UK team is other than winning the national championship is how connect we were, how much we loved each other – Ron Mercer, Tony Delk they come to Evansville all the time. They are in our gym so our guys know them so they see how connected with the program is about so that is what we talk about. My time is gone so some these kids don’t remember who I am but their parents do so my ego is not built that way. I’m all about my players, it’s about – I’m showing them at enjoy this right now, enjoy this locker room because this is what it is about. In 10, 20 years when guys come back and you are still calling each other and hanging out with each other, having dinner, that is what it is about. That is what I love about my UK team, we were brothers off the court and that is why we played so well on the court, because we got along and we weren’t afraid to show it and that is what we are teaching here.”
On putting Evansville on to the national stage…
“It feels great and to be honest they are a great team, but I really believe in my guys, I really believe what we are building and the way that we play, it is tough for teams to play us and at this pace if we don’t play a lot of guys. I don’t get caught up in that. I believe in my guys and they will tell you that, I believe in them. We talk to Tony Delk, those guys, I told them we were going to come in here and we were going to get one, we are going to surprise a lot of people today. One thing I always remember about my time at UK, talked to Jim O’Brien, Coach P (Rick Pitino) and we were getting on the bus to head over to the Meadowlands, I’m getting on the bus and I look right at Jim O’Brien and Coach P and said “today is a great day to be a wildcat”. Today at practice I told my guys, today is a great day to be a Purple Ace, let’s go do it.”
Evansville Student-Athletes
#20, Sam Cunliffe, G, R-Jr.
On how it feels to beat Kentucky…
“Right now, I am still thinking about it. It’s amazing. You come to a school like this and you talk about doing things like this and making history and playing in front of these bright lights. We prepared the right way. We had our mind set in the right spot that we could actually do it. It is surreal. I could have never imagined this in my life. So, for our team to see the preparation we put in and see something great come from it is unbelievable.”
On transferring from Kansas…
“Games like this in this kind of environment, if you have never been there before, can get your nerves going a little bit. I, obviously, had played against Kentucky four times already so I knew what to expect and how they were going to come out. For me, I knew what to expect and I know I can play with these guys and my teammates can play with these guys and I felt that I had a little bit of an edge to tell my guys what to look for and what you are going to see. So, I think that was a big part of it. Just having the experience of being around and playing big teams like that and knowing what it takes to prepare for big teams like that and so I think it really was a beneficial thing for us for sure.”
On knowing you could make this game special…
“I think when practice came around, we saw how we were preparing and we saw that we were doing something a little bit different. Our defensive scheme was a little bit different and we are going to see how they handled it. That is obviously an amazing team. I just don’t think that they saw what we did to them. So, I think that gave us an advantage and for sure practice.”
On a comparison to the game in the Bahamas when you played for Arizona State…
“I think the main thing… if anybody remembers the Arizona State game, but I think we lost by 40 or 50, but I think the main thing that I would say is for this team we knew that to win we had to all… we had to use each other. There was no way that we were going to do that as individuals and we all bought into that starting in practice. We are going to do this. Everybody is going to have a role and everybody has to fulfill what they are supposed to do. So, I think that was the difference for sure.”
On coming off the bench…
“I don’t really try to put too much into starting or coming off the bench. I think coming off the bench you have a little more of an advantage because you kind of get to see how the game is going and you get to look and see where you are going to pick your spots. I think it was an advantage for me. I told coach, “as long as I play, I don’t care if I start or come off the bench.” I am fine with that role and I am perfectly happy.”
On emotions in the locker room…
“We have a team full of competitors. Practice is very competitive. It doesn’t matter what we are doing. We want to win. I think that we have a bunch of guys who just believe and a bunch of guys who don’t care about the jersey or the arena. We have the same court. We put our pants on one leg at a time. We are going to come out here and play in the midst. Obviously, we have a great team, great environment. We are just happy that we were able to come together and pull it out.”
#33, K.J. Riley, G, Sr.
On how it feels to just have beaten #1 Kentucky…
“It’s great. They’re a great team, good talent. We just showed the world that we can play. Anybody can play with anybody. We played with confidence and we stuck to the game plan.”
On where Evansville’s confidence came from…
“We work hard every day. Like I told you after Ball State, we treat every game the same, we stick to our game plan no matter who we play. We are not really focused on the name. We really focus on what we have to do to win.”
On when he thought they had a chance to make a dream turn to reality…
“In practice when we started scouting them. We had confidence before we even came in here. Coach told us, ‘We could win; this is a winnable game.’ Then we believed it from the jump. We didn’t say, ‘Oh they have a lot of guys on the draft board.’ We had faith in ourselves, as a team, and the work we put in, and the preparation.”
On Evansville’s roster…
“We have 10 guys that can start, so it depends on the game. It really does not matter. We are 10-12 deep, so games are going to be different.”
On Coach McCarty’s emotions postgame…
“This was for coach, coming back to where he won a championship. We did this for him. He took it very seriously. We knew he wanted to win, and we did everything in our power to win.”
On what Coach Walter McCarty said to them…
“He told us just be humble. It’s a great team, a great learning experience. We are going to continue to get better. Do not treat it differently as another game, as another win. Be humble.”
