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Kentucky Men’s Basketball
Penn State Media Opportunity
Coach Calipari
On the value of taking a long trip …
“The issue became that it is a Saturday afternoon game, which means we would
do a two in the morning or three in the morning flight, get back at five and leave
to get back up here either Thursday night or miss class on Friday and that is why
we stayed. We didn’t want to put them through that kind of travel. We wanted
to get them a day off so we took the day off today with one day off a week
schedule. Now we have to get back after it, we get up to Connecticut today and
work on what we are going to do offensively. Right now we made some strides
offensively, we do break down to block shots and do those things, we did get
outrebounded yesterday. We had a couple of turnovers early in the second half,
but we didn’t have really any after that.”
On the play of Marquis Teague …
“He has done everything a guard I have brought into the (Madison Square)
Garden has done. You know it is like all of a sudden you forget about what you
have to do for the team and you start to do your own thing. That happened to
Derrick (Rose), John (Wall) and you think about Brandon (Knight) early who had
eight turnovers against Washington and five against Connecticut. He averaged
13 in two games and so that was early in the season and that is going to happen
when you play the way we play and that guy has his hands on the ball a lot.”
On Penn State …
“They’re good. I mean they have won a bunch of games here. They do a good
job at running their offense, as a matter of fact they run some stuff similar to what
we are doing. They do a nice little job of throwing stuff at you, and they bring
some press at you. We need to really perform to be able to do this. I had no idea
how we would play against Kansas. I was right in what I thought and we came
out the same way verses Marist. We need to understand that every opponent
is a worthy opponent, especially because they are playing us and playing out of
their minds.”
On how the team’s performance is a reflection of a team in November …
“That’s probably as much as it is. I told you guys this, I want it to be easy but
I walked off the floor after the Kansas game and said well this will be another
grind. A lot of times you try to analyze and put the players in the best position
to succeed as well as get minutes for everyone to play. You need to have guys,
because you never know what is going to happen throughout the season. Last
year we didn’t have this much, but we do now, so we have to get the guys on the
floor to get minutes.”
On the best thing he saw from his team against Kansas …
“I like our will to win, you know the first part of the game we shot all jumpers and
I didn’t want this to be that way. Most teams are going to do that to us, they want
to get physical and not let us run up and down the court. We hope that they foul
us, and be physical, which is the game plan against us.”
On how teams will scheme to prevent UK from transitioning …
“They want to make us play half-court traditionally. And people who watch my
team historically, if we are winning a nine or 10 point game, we will be grinding it
out. That’s the reason we play the way we play so that we will be fine if we play
that way. All I know is you better score because if not we will be flying back on
the rebound. We are a pretty good defensive team, and I think when the other
team changes the way they play then we are winning. We just need to be more
aggressive and make plays, now like you said we needed a half-court game, but
we still stretched out the lead.”
“He played well. He did fine. What happened to us in the first half was we were
not getting involved. When Doron (Lamb) is at point guard, you’re trying to get
everyone involved and what Darius did in the second half when they went zone,
we put him in the slot and told him to let it fly kid and he took his shots and made
them. Now defensively and rebounding, he needs to get those tough balls.
Terrence (Jones) and Michael (Kidd-Gilchrist) got in there and got some tough
rebounds too. I thought he did well though, he did well.”
On Terrence Jones being the go-to guy …
“You can’t go to a guy who can’t make free throws. I have had players that shoot
25 percent from the line that want the ball and I said you’re not going to (get it)
because they will make you shoot free throws. What I told the guys yesterday,
we need to explore what block they were going to and we needed to expose
it. Terrence then went physically after it as well as Michael (Kidd-Gilchrist)
sometimes and Kyle (Wiltjer) when he’s in there. We took away some lobs and
the skip pass, and then we used it on them. We had it there the whole game but
Doron would over penetrate and didn’t skip it out. We need to do a better job of
recognizing it and using the pick and role.”
On shot-blocking as a learned skill …
“Well it starts with being long-armed and you can’t be a shot blocker by going up
before he releases it. Marcus Camby texted me after the game, and I asked if he
watched the game. He said ‘I watch every one of your games.’ I asked if Anthony
(Davis) looked like a young Camby and he laughed and said ‘yeah.’ I then joked
and said he shoots better though.”
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