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#2 Kentucky – 88 Radford – 40
COACH JOHN CALIPARI
Q. Could you talk about Marquis Teague's play tonight?
JOHN
CALIPARI: It was good. I told him I'm going to give him one flub a
half. He had one where two guys ran out, he looked away and threw it
and it didn't quite go out of bounds and he had one in the second half
right in front of our bench where he tried to say, ‘Michael, like, ooh,
you left your feet and threw it.’ But one a half we can deal with. So
he had five assists, two turns. He would have had three other assists
but guys weren't prepared to shoot the ball. He thought he played in
control, he went when he had to, and now he scores points without
trying to score points.
But look, I've got to do a better job with
him. This kid is going to do whatever I ask him to do. He's a great
kid. I've got to do a better job. I've got to coach him better. I've
got to be more prepared to really break down tape with him and show him
and talk to him during the games. He's got to be right near me, at
least for the next month, and then he'll be fine.
Q. What did you think of Sam Malone's stutter step and then move to the basket?
JOHN
CALIPARI: The one he turned over or the lay up? It just makes you
laugh. You know what was funny? I walked in the office yesterday night,
and he was in the gym shooting. One more of my stars, because you know
what, he didn't get in practice that much. If you've been to our
practice, he doesn't get on the floor and practice, so he wants to get
ready for his opportunity. Brian Long better start doing the same
thing.
We're trying to figure out what we are. I've gone
to seven guys, and then Eloy (Vargas), I'm getting him some spot
minutes. But I told Eloy, you have two good games this season knocking
people around, blocking shots, you're fine, so don't worry about it.
I've got to figure out, and I told Kyle, if you don't come up with
balls, Kyle I'm taking you out. Now, he had eight rebounds but he could
have had another three or four rebounds. You know, like I said, we've
got a ways to go, but it was a good sign that our point guard was doing
what he was supposed to, our zone offense was better, we attacked, we
didn't throw it around the perimeter, we got it into the lane. But
we've got a lot of work to do. I've got a lot of work to do with this
team.
Q. Can you talk about your free throw
shooting, how much more improved it was tonight, and also about what
you just thought of your brief time you played in the zone?
JOHN
CALIPARI: Well, when you're up 30, you can make free throws. I need to
know when it's a two point game with two seconds to go and you're on
national television who's making those, but up 30 you can make them.
It's
deceiving. I'm happy we did it because when teams look at our stats
they start saying, you can't foul them. Good, don't foul us, because
that's how they've been playing us to this point.
What was the other question?
Q. About your zone.
JOHN
CALIPARI: The zone I wanted to put in, and I think it's something that
we need to think about doing some. And we've got to get better than we
are right now. We got out of whack a little bit a couple times, but
we're
I'll look at the tape again, and we're going to try to figure
out how we've got to play. Because we're long, you think you've got a
shot, and someone has got a hand on you, but then we got a rebound.
Kyle (Wiltjer) got that ball jerked from him, and Eloy (Vargas) went in
there and rebounded, so maybe Eloy is the middle of that zone if we go
zone.
Q. What does a game like tonight do to help you down the road when you play the schools like the North Carolinas of the world?
JOHN
CALIPARI: I don't know, but here's what I would tell you: After Old
Dominion you had a lot of players in there wondering if they were any
good, and wondering if our team was any good. We play Penn State, we're
world beaters, we're beating anybody, where's the Lakers? Then you go
to ODU and you're like, ‘Oh my gosh, we're not very good and I'm not
very good and what is wrong with me?’ You want them to play well. For
me, I've always been this way as a coach: I want people to look at
individual players on my team and say, ‘That guy is good and that guy
really plays and this guy plays and that guy plays,’ and yes, I want
them to say my team plays hard, they play great defense and they play
together. Short of that, I want it to be about individual players
playing well. If I can get them to play well and I can get them to play
together where they're a team, good things will happen. What happened
up at ODU, we all went our own way and then everybody looked bad. There
wasn't a player on the court except Darius (Miller) who looked like he
was a good player.
Q. If Marquis (Teague) gets one flub per half, what happens on the second flub?
JOHN
CALIPARI: I'll probably be very aggressive with him. Depending on time
and score, I may take him out, I may not take him out. I had a young
man at UMass named Antoine Brown, and I used to have three of those
flubs in my pocket a game. I knew he'd spin and get it stolen, and he
was my only point guard. He was a freshman. He was a two-guard in high
school. He would spin and get it stolen, and I'd be all right, on the
third one, you're all right, and on the fourth one I'd start getting
mad. Fifth one I got really mad.
But you've got to as a kid is
learning you've got to give him a couple a half or a couple a game, not
a couple a half, one a half and he tried.
He's trying. He's listening.
Q. Slow start on offense, seemed like defense kind of got things going. What did you like on both ends of the ball?
JOHN
CALIPARI: Well, there's two things you can do when a team tries to hold
the ball, which is what they were going to do until the shot clock
winds down, hopefully make shots: You've got to really bother them. You
can't let them just do it because they're not trying to score. So try
to steal balls, try to get up in people, try to be active with your
hands, block balls and run. After a while you're wearing them out more
than they're wearing you out.
But we didn't we came down and we
walked, we missed a shot, we got a ball tipped from us. It was 4 0
versus being 12 0 and thenmwe got going a little bit offensively and
made some plays.
But like I said, we are what we are right now. We're still trying to learn, we're trying to figure things out.
Q. You've said a couple times now that you think you've got to play some zone. Why is that?
JOHN
CALIPARI: Because I think there's some teams that you can zone that
we're going to play that I think we can come down and they want to get
into their rhythm of play and we can play some zone.
It's also I
don't see us giving up wide open shots because we're so big. You know,
I just don't see it because we're so long and big. I would probably do
it with a big lineup so that every shot is a contested shot and it's
not bad. I've never had a big zone like that. You think about it, we're
6-foot-10 across the line and Michael Kidd-Gilchrist has a 7-foot-2
wingspan at one guy, and maybe it's Doron (Lamb) or Marquis (Teague) at
the other guard. I mean, that's a big zone, very big.
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