Kentucky-Georgia Postgame Quotes
Kentucky Men’s Basketball Head Coach John Calipari
On the biggest differences in the game…
“We had two breakdowns defensively that led to six points, and they were critical. We get up four, and I have to go back because I thought we had great looks, we miss, they make. I call that a will to win. You cannot lose the ball in a three-point game. I am not losing it, and we lose it. There was some good stuff, but I played Antonio [Reeves] too many minutes, I had no choice, I played Chris Livingston too many minutes, I tried to get him out in one play and it cost us three points. Adou [Thiero] in the first half played well. Cason [Wallace] fouled twice, kind of reminds me of the Alabama game, the same, like, if you’re not ready, we’ll go, you know. And then being shorthanded, I know that will be said publicly and around the nation, ‘Oh, they had two guys out,’ no it won’t, but that’s okay. Let me give Georgia credit – Mike [White] had them ready. They physically, [Kario] Oquendo just went right at people’s shoulder and had 20 at half, and we did what we do, we came back in the second half and we were up four. My teams win that game. Now, what happened? We had a couple of guys out. So, would they have made a difference? Maybe, but give Georgia all the credit. They deserve it.”
On the energy from the bench going down in the second half…
“I’ll look at it. Obviously, I’m not looking at the bench. We had a lot of guys out, and when I get on the bus, I’ll say, ‘This was said to me,’ and I’ll ask them.”
On the team’s shot-clock violation following the media timeout…
“The guy that could it and was supposed to dribble to the top, didn’t. We still have some execution problems. We looked, and we knew that they were going to go with Oscar, so you’ve got it and we threw it to who we wanted to, and then he passed it. And then all of a sudden, what? But the defensive ones, too. We were trapping the post and the guy didn’t trap. We were trapping the post from the baseline and the big guy let him go middle and throw it to that corner. No. We’re doing this stuff every day. Here’s what’s great – we’ve got the kind of schedule that, let’s go win games and we’ll be fine. You’re just going to have to win games. There are games that we’re playing against teams that you beat those teams, you’re fine. Whether we’re healthy or not, we’re going to have to go at those teams, and those are going to be important games for us. But we have them. It’s not like we don’t have any other chances to go get this right, and we do. I’m fine, I’m not happy we lost, I’m not happy when you’re up four that we do the stuff we do, I’m not happy for some breakdowns, but we’re going to learn and get better, and then we got games that we’ve got to get. This one coming up Wednesday against Mississippi State, hard game. Down there? Come on. They’re going to smell blood in the water. Are we going to be healthy? I have no idea. But we’ll see.”
On his plan for Adou Thiero’s minutes coming into the game…
“I thought he played 10 or 12 minutes in the game, and he ends up playing how many in the first half? [15 in the first half] Come on. We were only down 10. I walked into the locker room and said, ‘If we didn’t give up that 3-pointer and we were only down seven, it would have been a miracle.’ Like, we’re playing basically without a point guard. But the second half, I liked what I saw, but again, the guys that had to make some daggers, missed every shot. We didn’t get a basket until there was three minutes in the game. Think about that. You have an opportunity to throw the dagger, and whether you don’t shoot it or whatever it may be, we got a good team, now we’re going to have to pull it together. My job is to keep letting them know I believe in them, and I have to do some things here now.”
