University of Kentucky Basketball Men’s Basketball
Feb. 27, 2021
Lexington, Kentucky
Florida at Kentucky
Kentucky Head Coach John Calipari
Q. Obviously you all started well offensively, scored a bunch of points, were playing fast. What did Florida do to change that?
COACH JOHN CALIPARI: They did their little press and I could not—after Jacob (Toppin) walked, I couldn’t get anybody to drive to the middle of the court, which is what we’ve always done to that, or, get our point guard to get a screen and then create something for somebody. So we end up using 15 seconds. And then it was what it was. At that point, it was like, “Guys, they spread the court. We should be playing faster.” But guys got tentative. We had some bad play, individual bad play today, and that happens. They are not machines. They are not robots. We had a couple guys play one of their worst games, no energy. And you know, we still had our chance to win. We leave their best three-point shooter, just, you know, what are we doing, why would you do that? And I don’t have an answer. You know, we’ve got to get ready for a flipped-around game. We have to practice tomorrow, watch the tape. But I would imagine if Mississippi watches this—they play zone, anyway—they will probably play 40 minutes of zone. We looked out of whack. No hard cuts. Normally, you guys that have listened to me, historically when a team plays zone, I like it because you have to pass the ball. They are in a zone. We didn’t pass it again. Whoever caught it, held it. “I’m making the play.” Okay. Now you’re going against—the ball moves, it’s posted. We don’t throw any skips that we had worked on for three days over the top. But give them credit. Florida did what they had to. We’re up one, we got our chances, here we go, let’s win this thing, and you know, we don’t. No daggers, shots that were available to us, we missed. Take a bad shot, instead of trying to get fouled, “I’m just going to throw one.” That’s losing basketball—losing basketball. So we’ll be able to look at the tape and hopefully get better.
Q. Keion (Brooks Jr.), even when he’s not scoring it or shooting it great, has been pretty reliable in terms of being an energy guy and the guy who will go do did all the other stuff. How surprising was today from Keion?
COACH JOHN CALIPARI: Really surprising. I have no idea. I mean, he lost one ball and then did not sprint back and let them dunk a ball, when the guy was three steps behind him when they both took off. But I’m going to say this: I love him. He’s played great for us. They are not machines and they are not robots. He wasn’t very good today. But let’s see if the next game he comes back and he’s better next game.
Q. Did you consider adding a game this last week when you realized Texas A&M wasn’t going to be played?
COACH JOHN CALIPARI: Yes.
Q. And will you add a non-conference game moving forward since you won’t get it made up or just these last two?
COACH JOHN CALIPARI: Probably not now. But we had a top team, a top-ranked team that we had discussed, thinking about playing Thursday. And we had another team that we had discussed playing on Thursday. But you know what, let us just build some confidence. You know, South Carolina, who we have to play Saturday, just won by 30. Mississippi is obviously playing really well. So we are going to have a tough go of it with what we have, but obviously we’ve got a road game and a home game and then we go to (the Southeastern Conference Tournament).
Q. How frustrating is it for you to still this late in the season that your team hits so many of these offensive droughts where either you can’t make a shot or give the shot that you want, no matter what?
COACH JOHN CALIPARI: Yeah, it was disappointing, and again, they got tentative. I put Dontaie (Allen) in and what I basically said is, “Find him.” Guess what? They didn’t even look at him. I said, “Get him shots.” Are you ready? They didn’t. “I’m getting mine.” I don’t know what it was, but we were not connected today like we’ve been, and me saying that, like as bad as I thought we played in the first half, we’re up one. Now, all of a sudden, we couldn’t get anything and we’re up one with three—I mean, it shows you that we can do this and not play well and still do this. But somebody’s got to have to make a dagger, a shot, a play, a block. How about (Brandon Boston Jr.’s) rebound under the goal? It’s a one-bucket game. You don’t come up with that? You let him jerk it out of your hand? Then we lose the game. So there were so many plays like that, that I look and I’m like, if you want to win, that doesn’t happen. You don’t drive—you know, Jacob (Toppin)—and just throw the ball and fall on the floor. You don’t do that. You’re getting fouled or don’t shoot it. So there was, you know, again, we’re still—like I said, we got work to do and it was disappointing. I was hoping we could get this one. I thought we were getting it all the way. We’re up one. As bad as we were playing, I thought we could still get it and then all the sudden we leave a guy and leave a three-point shooter open and come down and took a throw shot, they make them, and all of a sudden you’re like, what in the world just happened? Come on, man, we got to have basketball sense. And you know what, I’ll say it again: They are not robots, they are not machines, they don’t play great, they don’t make every shot. But the disappointing thing is this team fought to get themselves in a good position, in a good position that something good could happen for us, and we kind of just had a couple guys not show up. Like, what? What? Was it anxiety that wore you out, the anxiety of the game? The anxiety of worrying about the game? I don’t know. But we weren’t the same team today.
Q. How much do you think maybe the layoff, the week off without a game, a midweek game, maybe contributed to being out of rhythm or out of the routine, and where do you assess your NCAA (Tournament) chances at this point?
COACH JOHN CALIPARI: We’re worried about Mississippi. I’m not worried about that other stuff. We’ve got to take one game and let’s try to get better. It wasn’t—it was (Florida’s) zone, that 3-2 zone, and that zone press that got us out of sync. It wasn’t taking a couple days off. I mean, I don’t believe that. I believe that we had three great days of practice. We had a great shootaround this morning. (Florida) went zone. We got confused. You know, we don’t have that guy out there that takes the ball and says, “I’m going to make this stuff happen.” When your point (guard) is a little bit shaky because of how they are playing, then the rest of us are shaky. You know, we’ve had that guy that would just go get a basket or go create something or go get a lob or go, “We’re not having that right now.” But I say it again, normally when you’re playing the zone, normally teams pass, pass, pass, pass. We were like pass-hold, pass-hold, pass-hold, pass-bounce, point, come and screen. I mean, it was, you know—when we ran it up the court, we weren’t bad. When we got in the halfcourt, we held the ball.
Q. You’ve already talked about the zone and zone press that got you out of sync, however, you got double-digits turnovers for the first time in a while. Could you explain why that might have happened today?
COACH JOHN CALIPARI: Probably because we got back to, “I’m going to make my play” versus “I’m going to make a play for my teammate.” We probably reverted a little bit. But (Florida) had 16 turnovers. I mean, we had 15. They had 16. When you look at the numbers, what happened to us, you miss every shot, it’s hard to win, and we still had a chance. We were 1-for-11 in the second half from the three and I’m going to guess five of them were wide open and we missed them all. The only one to make one was Jacob (Toppin).
Q. You were talking about having that point guard that can go make that play. When a team doesn’t have that, how do they compensate for that issue?
COACH JOHN CALIPARI: You hope you have another guy that can do it, that can go, you can give it to him and he can create some offense. And for us, where were we throwing the ball? What were we doing? We were throwing it to our post. Today our post would not throw that skip pass. The first one that was thrown was thrown so high over (Brandon Boston Jr.’s) head, and no one was on (Boston). There was no reason for that. Again let me say this, guys. Today, again, we had 15 turnovers but we had seven other bad passes that took away jump shots for us. Just threw it by the guy’s ankle. Threw it over his head. Threw it outside of his—why would you do that? There’s no one between you and him. And so again, when you’re—when you are trusting and you’re believing and you’re into your team, those kind of plays don’t happen, and we have been so good, so good as of late, and then today, you know, not so good. And again, what was their dagger shot? Man, step back, little two-pointer. That was a dagger. And (Florida guard Tre Mann) made it. And then he made those last two free throws. But that was a dagger. We had ours. We missed them all. So back to the drawing board. Thanks, guys.
ATHLETICS COMMUNICATIONS AND PUBLIC RELATIONS
KENTUCKY vs. FLORIDA
MEN’S BASKETBALL
FEB. 27, 2021
RUPP ARENA – LEXINGTON, Ky.
Kentucky Student-Athletes
#30, Olivier Sarr, Sr., F
On seeing his family on the video board prior to the game …
“A lot of feelings, man. It was just unbelievable to see them out there and see their faces right before my game. It’s been a long time, as a lot of people know, because of the pandemic. It was just an unbelievable feeling to see my brother and my parents out there watching the game. It was just fantastic.”
On the wearing effect of another close game …
“It’s definitely not easy. It’s something that I think about and something that will hopefully pay off one day. I’m just trying to learn from these experiences and move on.”
On the difficulty of guarding Florida forward Colin Castleton in the lane …
“We over-helped at times and he was able to find guys open for three-point shots. That cost us a little bit.”
On the team’s morale …
“It’s one game. We’ve still got a lot to prove and a lot to learn. We had a lot of mistakes. We’re going to take it one game at a time and make sure that we’re not taking two, three steps ahead and just focus in on the present moment.”
On what the team has to prove and learn …
“We have to learn how to finish the last four minutes, learn how to close games like we did for the past three games before that. We’ve got to learn from our mistakes, whether it’s bad defensive coverage, bad execution, bad spacing —that’s what I meant by that.”
#0, Jacob Toppin, So., F
On what Florida was doing with its zone that was so effective …
“We’re a better team when we are running the floor. They were kind of staying compacted and we couldn’t get into the middle of the paint, so that was making it hard for us. We couldn’t figure out how to penetrate the defense and that’s what affected us.”
On if they feel like their backs are against the wall with postseason near …
“Oh yeah, we’re definitely in attack mode right now. We wanted to win this game so bad for what we want in the future, but we didn’t come up with a win. But now we just got to look forward, look into the future, just take it one game at a time from here and we’re in attack mode like I said. So, we’ve just got to keep pushing, keep getting better and we’ve got to come out with ‘W’s.”
On whether not having a midweek game upset the team’s rhythm …
“I don’t think it affected us at all. We did a lot of conditioning, so we were in game shape. We did a lot of things in practice that prepared us for this game. We just didn’t come out with the ‘W’.”
Kentucky Basketball Postgame Quotes
Kentucky vs. Florida
Rupp Arena – Lexington, Ky.
Feb. 27, 2021
Florida Head Coach Mike White
On the teams fouling and it being a physical game …
“We have addressed fouling defensively as much as anything this entire year. We struggled with it early and we thought early on that it was because these guys weren’t used to playing as fast as we were playing and weren’t used to pressing as much as we were pressing. And now we are playing a little bit slower and we are zone pressing more, tempo pressing and man-on-man pressing more. So, there’s really no excuse other than, you know discipline just has to be better. The decisions that we make, have to be better. I thought we made a lot of good decisions offensively for about 35 minutes. Defensively, I thought outside of the live ball turnovers that led to transition points for them, which is an offensive issue of course, an addition outside of fouling I thought we were really good. We’ve got to defensive rebound a little better of course. The fouls continue to be an issue. My guys play really hard, but when you’re playing really hard and your switching some defenses, you’re closing out maybe a different guy that you were responsible for a few seconds earlier. We have to be able to understand how to guard that guy without fouling him.”
On this game preparing them for the SEC Tournament …
“Anytime you can win a close game, especially against a high-level team and program, especially on the road there’s a lot to take from that and learn from that. And really win or lose you are going to have opportunities to learn. In a close game, where it was possession by possession, it was good college basketball, we’ll be able to take a lot more from it.”
On Tre Mann’s aggressiveness …
“Oh absolutely, I want more. There was one there – we threw eight or 10 passes for whatever reason at each other’s feet. We have to continue to get better with team passing. But there was one with an average pass at his knees in front of the bench. I didn’t think anyone was around him with a few minutes left. I yelled, ‘Shoot it,’ to him. There was probably two or three times during the game where I felt like he could have been a little more aggressive. He’s making good decisions. He plays with such good tempo and he has such a great pace to his game. I also don’t want to speed him up either. Obviously, the baseline shots, opposite of our bench late was a huge shot. For him to get to the foul line the way he did, he continues to defensive rebound at a higher level. It gets the ball in one of our best player’s hands to lead the break and start the offense.”
On Tyree Appleby’s performance …
“I am not going to say feast or famine, but you said it. I love him, man. What a motor, energy level, toughness. He makes huge winning plays, like that one. That was a winning play. He takes charges and back taps. He creates steals for others that don’t necessarily show up as a steal on the box score for him. He helps us move in at times. He draws fouls. But this is his first year playing at this level. He has got to continue – also in his defense it is his first year playing as a true point. At his last spot, he was relied upon a bunch off the ball, maybe even more so off the ball than on the ball to really score. He is growing as a true point with his decision making both offensively and defensively, but especially offensively with the value of the basketball. He really sees it and understands it. He is really locked in with playing careful. A high level of value for the ball, he takes care of it. He can sometimes speed others up and speed himself up, but he will grow.”
On getting four assists from Colin Castleton …
“Yeah, yeah, yeah, we were trying to isolate Colin in the post and he took advantage. The timing was perfect as the perimeter player was lunging at Colin. Colin was picking up his dribble. Colin is a really good passer, an accurate passer for the most part. Hitting Tyree right in his pocket, Tyree stepped up and hit a big shot for us.”
On the team feeling good about winning at Kentucky …
“They had a big win the other night at Tennessee, and we’ve had some big road wins. What we have to do is get back and rest and take advantage of Monday. We’ve got to flush this one out tomorrow. Some of these guys are really banged up. We have to really put in time. Our last three opponents have a lot of prep time. This team has not had much prep time for anything, really since the huge adversity that we faced before Christmas. One quick turn, then another quick turn. We’ve got to rest and take advantage of Monday and Tuesday. Lock in on Missouri, but somewhat lock in on ourselves as well as we continue to evolve. That said, circling back, to win at Rupp Arena, under any circumstance is a pretty neat thing. To win on the road in the SEC is really hard, but this place is obviously very, very difficult and Kentucky is playing really well.”
On Tre Mann’s physicality …
“He’s understanding the importance for him to get in the mix. I think he’s elevated, he’s bought into the fact that the ball is in his hands and it’s an easy way for him to go get it and he doesn’t need to wait on an outlet. I think he’s put more of an emphasis on hitting and getting. We talk about hit and get, just block out and go get the dang rebound, right? Hit and get has turned into guys go get it. Just go get it. It’s late in the year, we all have a better understanding of who we are. A lot of these point guards and two guards who are used to defending don’t go, as their floor balance guys and Tre has really embraced going to go get it and he needs to continue to do that.”
On Colin Castleton’s shot making …
“He’s got a really high level of skill, and those big, soft hands, really good feet. I thought we did a better job with getting him the ball in positions to be successful. I’d just like to see him get some deeper touches. He had an errant pass right in front of us where I thought he had a steal and a layup, but these guys, they’re being asked to pound that thing inside. We worked underneath those passes for the entire preseason and the first mark of the season. Colin, we found out a few games into the season that he can do it at this level offensively. He shows signs defensively, blocks shots. He has a ways to go to hit his ceiling of course. Tonight, he was really good. We played through him a lot and he’s got the ability to be the man. He can get some deep touches and he can play in space. You never know, the next game we may call on him to kick that thing out a bunch depending on how they defend.”
On going back to play at home …
“They’re really fired up. Excited to get on this plane and watch the film. We’ll see what we have to continue to work on and allow our guys to recuperate a little bit tomorrow and on Monday. We love playing at home and to be really good, of course. This is going to be a great team, about as experienced as any team in our league and the country. They execute, they defend, they’re tough and physical. They’ve got good players and experience and they put it all together this year.”
KENTUCKY MEN’S BASKETBALL POSTGAME QUOTES
UK-FLORIDA POSTGAME MEDIA
RUPP ARENA | LEXINGTON, KY.
FEB. 27, 2021
#4 Anthony Duruji, F, Jr.
On how it feels to get a win versus Kentucky …
“Man, it feels good. It feels really, really good. Kentucky has been playing really good basketball lately and it’s always tough to get a road win. So, we’re really excited and we just want to keep this momentum going.”
On when they felt they were going to get this win …
“I mean we were feeling pretty confident, but you know they’re still a very, very great team so we just had to keep on sticking to the game plan to the finish, and we sealed the deal so I’m thankful.”
On confidence going into halftime …
“Yeah confidence was very big. You know they got up on us, but Coach said just to keep composure. I mean once we started our defense again, we continued to just keep playing the right way. I think we continued making that shift and we were able to come back and make the right plays.”
#1 Tre Mann, G, So.
On what they did better on offense today to get the win in a close game …
“We had a couple of turnovers in the end but I felt like the last two minutes me and Tyree (Appleby), well it’s not just me and Tyree, the whole team took care of the ball a little bit more. We had a little bit more composure. That’s really it, we took ‘A’ shots today. We had a lot of ‘A’ shots and a couple of ‘F’ shots, but it’s getting better every game. So as long as we do that, we have a good chance of winning every game.”
On previous issues with turnovers and improvement tonight with ball movement plus the offense flow in general …
“That was something we’ve struggled with the last couple of games, well our last couple of losses. So, we got into the film room as a team and we looked at it. We came to the conclusion that if we want to win games, we’ve got to share the ball, move the ball and take ‘A’ shots. So, we’ve been working on getting better at that and we have been, and we’ve been winning games so that’s what we’re gonna keep doing.”
On their finish tonight …
“We pulled through like you said and that just shows how strong we were because the last couple of minutes when they had those two great shots we had to deal with some turnovers. It could have been easy to put our heads down and just give up on the game, but we didn’t, and we were resilient. We just finished strong, so we got the win.”
