Kentucky Head Coach John Calipari
On losing this game after Auburn shot badly from the field, but attempted 44 free throws …
“I don’t know if that’s the most free throws taken against my team, but it might be. But let me just tell you: They put their head down and they go, and that’s what they do. And we were trying to do the same without the same result, but we were trying to do the same. The difference was the offensive rebounding and that came down to toughness. (Austin) Wiley had a field day on Nick (Richards) and not many people have done that to Nick, but he did. There were probably six or seven offensive rebounds – you ready? – we didn’t leave our feet. Like, we didn’t even jump. I’m like, what is going on? We didn’t play well, but give them credit because they did what they had to. The end of the half really, really hurt us. Really hurt us. Like, we got the game in hand and we just come down against a press and just—what in the world? We don’t play that way. If you’ve all watched us, we don’t even have that in our repertoire. Throwing, throwing, throwing. We don’t—and I’m like, where did you come up—what? But here’s what I said after: We all had a bad day, me included. We all had a bad day, because there’s not one guy in our room I would say played well, but give Auburn the credit. They were more physical. They created more fouls than us, obviously, and the crazy thing is we had our chance: 62-60 with the ball, we’re OK, let’s go and we don’t do what we need to.”
On playing with limited depth …
“It is what it is. They gotta come. I’ve done it with five guys when I was at UMass. I’ve played five guys when I was at UMass. I’ve played five. You know what those guys figured out? They better come every game. You can’t afford not to.”
On Ashton Hagans …
“Struggled. Struggled. I don’t know (why). Have to ask him. He struggled. He struggled. And it’s hard, because Tyrese is not ready to run a team yet. Possessions matter. They really do. And when you’re not in that mindset, you’re just playing and exchanging baskets, you have a lead and all of sudden you’re on the road and you’re controlling the game and you just give them that? What’s the problem? I mean, what? But he’s learning. We need guys to play well. We got a game coming up now, Mississippi State. They’re beating everybody by 20. And you know what they are? They’re big and physical. If they push us around like we got pushed around today, it’s going to be a hard one for us.”
On keeping Richards’ confidence level up …
“There’s nothing that I can do. It’s him. Now why did you not jump ball for balls? Why did you not hit first? Why did you get outworked every…? Tell us why. And whatever your answer is, fix it, because that’s what happened. He wanted it worse than you wanted it. Why? What was your mindset? Are you thinking wrong? Do you have an arrogance to you? I don’t know. Whatever it is, you gotta change it. Ashton, why did you play that way? If you want to say it was there team and I got outworked, OK. That could be the answer. But this was a good win for Auburn. They had been struggling and had some teams had them where we had them, but they never let them off the hook. We just have guys that don’t know how to put—we get 10-point leads – the guys that have followed us – we get 10-point leads multiple times this year where we just give it up and did it quickly. Within a minute, all of a sudden it’s a two-point game. So we got stuff to learn.”
On bad decisions on offense …
“I don’t know because we got three point guards on the floor and I don’t understand, when you have three point guards how do you make bad decisions? And some of it’s both ends. Give Auburn credit, good win.”
Immanuel Quickley, G, So.
On Auburn shooting a lot of free throws and foul trouble …
“It was hard, but you can’t blame the refs for losing. We just gotta take this one on the chin. We just didn’t get it done. Hustle plays, rebounding, turnovers. We just didn’t get it done.”
On Auburn’s rebounding …
“Rebounding is just toughness. They out-toughed us today. I’m sure we’ll clean it back up, watch film. We’ll do more toughness drills when we get back to practice, but really rebounding comes down to one-on-one boxing out and getting the ball.”
On the challenge of playing without Richards at his best …
“First you have to give credit to Austin Wiley. He’s a really physical presence. He’s really good. He’s been around college basketball for a while now, so he knows what it takes. He played really good today, so give credit to him. We know how good Nick is. I’m sure he’ll bounce back. We’re not really worried about Nick playing if he didn’t bring it today.”
On whether losing to Auburn stings after last year’s Elite Eight …
“Any loss, honestly, individual for me is tough. I’m a competitor, so I don’t like losing. I’m sure the rest of my teammates can say that as well. We’re all competitors. We all want to win and we play really hard to win. Any loss, not just Auburn, we’re going to take it tough and we’re going to take it on the chin and we’re going to keep moving forward.”
Tyrese Maxey, G, Fr.
On Hagans’ foul trouble …
“Extremely hard. When anybody’s in foul trouble that’s important. But it happens. It’s the game of basketball. We had players step up, went on a run. Just couldn’t finish the deal.”
On why today was different in another hostile environment …
“We gotta stay together. I think we did a good job of that though, honestly. Hostile environment, hostile crowd, a lot of screaming. But like Quick said, we just gotta be tougher. There were some rebounds that us guards could have come up with that we should have and we didn’t. We’ll see that on film and we’ll correct it.”
On what Calipari said during the game …
“He was just telling us to keep fighting. He coaches to win the game, so at no point in time did he think we’re going to lose. After, he just said we gotta get better. Go back and watch the film, gotta be tougher and be ready for Tuesday. It’s a quick turnaround. We play—today is Saturday, practice tomorrow, Monday and be back at it against a very good Mississippi State team who he said just won four, five in a row. We gotta have a quick turnaround and let this go and try to go get win on Tuesday.”
Auburn Head Coach Bruce Pearl
Opening statement …
“It was a great day at Auburn Arena. It took Kentucky and a competitive Auburn basketball program to bring College GameDay to Auburn, Alabama and we’re grateful. They probably have eight or nine weekends all year long, and to think that Auburn would be a destination for College GameDay is certainly something that we’ve worked really hard for. It’s an accomplishment, but it takes Kentucky – the Wildcats – and the SEC, and two really good teams, that are trying to become very good teams.
“I thought my daughter, Jacqui, kind of got things started. Jacqui started singing the anthem for me when I was a coach at Southern Indiana when she was 11 years old. She had one lesson, one single lesson in her life. It was an hour0long lesson with a young lady from Indiana. She was a great singer. For 15 minutes, she talked to my daughter about how she would hold the microphone, how she would walk onto the court, how she should stand, what it means to sing the anthem and what it’s all about. It wasn’t a performance. It was an honor to honor our country and deliver our national anthem, and she nailed it. I’m very proud of her.
“We were great balance. We had great senior leadership. Samir Doughty played like it and made it a big place for us all night long. I thought Austin Wiley had a huge impact on the game with his physical presence. Nick Richards has been dominating lately, and Austin was just physically able to hang in there and negate some of it. And then I thought Anfernee McLemore, who gives away a lot of size, hung in there as well. But you know, for Austin to have seven offensive rebounds, for us to have, you know, 17 offensive rebounds speaks to the effort and the energy I thought our guys played with. We only turned it over seven times, which was a good thing. We didn’t always run good stuff. I thought probably towards the end, it looked like our depth a little bit wore Kentucky down. And you can see how effective a player Isaac Okoro is. Isaac didn’t shoot a very good percentage tonight. Had he, he would have had a big night. So it was a great win. But now it’s onto Arkansas and LSU, so it doesn’t get any easier.”
On guys being fresh …
“We played Wednesday at home against South Carolina. We played Saturday at home against Iowa State. We had to practice Sunday because we played Tuesday at Ole Miss. So of course Wednesday would be a typical day off. We had a lot of days in a row. I actually gave the five seniors plus Isaac almost a day off Thursday. We came in, we stretched, they got a lift in and they did nothing but just go through some offensive sets, a little bit of review, shot some free throws and they were out. I actually had a good hard contact practice with the bench and some of the freshmen. Then on Friday, less than 24 hours before the game, we actually hit. We went at it yesterday. And you know, when you do that the day before the game, you take a chance, you get somebody popped, get somebody hurt. But I thought we needed two days off to be able to recover from what had been a long stretch. I thought our guys had great effort and energy. Once again, Danjel Purifoy makes three 3s. Isaac makes two big 3s. He gets to the foul line 12 times. Austin has 10 rebounds. J’Von McCormick, as a point guard, has four assists, one turnover. Anfernee did a lot of positive things. It’s was a really good team effort.”
On how they were able to keep Ashton Hagans under control …
“Ashton Hagans is a big, strong, physical guard. I think Hagans and Nick Richards are key to their team. [Tyrese] Maxey is a tough cover. [Immanuel] Quickley is a tough cover. We felt like if Ashton and Richards had big games, they’d beat us. I think Isaac Okoro and Samir Doughty did a great job on Ashton. In our ball-screen coverage, we jumped it. We weren’t going to let Ashton get downhill easily. So it’s truly out of respect for Ashton that we game planned to try to limit him.”
On if the team has made the jump from being good to being very good …
“That’s a fair question. It has to take us from good to very good now. Kentucky is the best team we’ve played, so I thought we stepped up and responded. I think we took a step from good to very good. Another question is, ‘can we build on it?'”
On J’Von McCormick and Samir Doughty’s limited turnovers for the game …
“That’s big. Kentucky doesn’t try to turn you over much, Arkansas will. It’s about matchups, but it’s a point well taken. Our offense was better in the second half than it was in the first. When the offense was in front of me a little bit more, I could help them a little bit more. We’ve got to do a better job of going from the break to run something on the other end. We had too many empty possessions in the first half.”
On the celebration from the players and fans while on such a large platform …
“It was great. I’m glad we didn’t storm the court. Auburn has dished out a lot of money this year. When you win the Iron Bowl, we run on the field now. We’ll take that hit. It was definitely worth celebrating. We celebrated and, I don’t know if you noticed, but then we prayed. Just like we always do – give God the glory.”
Samir Doughty, G, Sr.
On the last four minutes …
“Down the stretch we saw that Isaac [Okoro] had a mismatch, so we just wanted to keep giving him the ball. We knew at the end of the day he was going to make the right play, whether that’s finishing or getting his teammates the ball. We saw the mismatch. You won’t be a great ball club if you don’t take advantage of those mismatches, no matter who’s hot. So, that’s what we did.”
On making 10 quick points to start the game …
“It was good. They were just fouling and I was just making the free throws. They were struggling at the beginning of the game to stay in front. They were just struggling to stay in front at certain times. I was capable of getting to the rim and they were fouling me. I was making free throws.”
On how he feels about the student’s dedication to the team …
“I think we have the best fans in the country and I think this is the hardest place to play in the country. It would not be like that without those guys. That shows how committed they are and how great of a crowd we have for them to get up that early in the morning when we were sleeping. That’s good.”
On how important of a win this is …
“Each and every game is important to us. We weren’t just focused on Kentucky. We’re focused on each and every opponent that we face. We know the importance of each and every game. One loss can put you in a worse spot. We’re playing for seeding at the end of the day. We’re trying to get a good seed going into March Madness, so we know each and every game is important to us.”
Austin Wiley, C, Sr.
On how he was able to contain Nick Richards …
“I think we just did a good job of playing physical and every time their guard drove to the basket, we knew they were going to look for him. We just stayed with him instead of rotating over for the block, so I feel like that helped a lot.”
His evaluation of his second half performance …
“I just tried to stay out of foul trouble. Coach started Anfernee [McLemore], so I just came with the energy. I knew I had to play smart in the second half, and I think I did a good job at that.”
On what this win means to the program and the fans …
“That’s why we came here – to make history. Fans should get used to this because we work hard. It shouldn’t be a surprising win every time we beat good teams like Kentucky. We have good players, too.”
On being plus-14 in rebound margin …
“I feel like that was a big difference in the game. I try to crash the boards hard every time. If I do that well, that’s how my team is going to win. I feel like that showed tonight.”
