Tre Mitchell and D.J. Wagner applied the defensive pressure against St. Joseph's. (Vicky Graff Photo)
St. Joseph’s coach Bill Lange knew his team played well Monday night against Kentucky even though it lost 96-88 in overtime because he understood how talented coach John Calipari’s team is.
“Kentucky made some amazing plays in transition into half court. They are going to be a really, really good team as they get even healthier and get more guys,” Lange said. “We couldn’t make the plays at the moments we needed to make them, but a lot of that was because of Kentucky.”
The Hawks made 15 3-pointers but Lange didn’t think that was because of poor UK defense.
“Kentucky is a terrific defensive team. I thought both teams’ intensity was really good. Almost every basket we got, we had to earn it,” Lange said.
The coach admitted he didn’t talk to his team a lot about UK’s overall talent and No. 1 ranked recruiting class.
“The freshmen that they have are really good. You know they’re really good. So, it’s talent. They’ve got great talent,” Lange said.
He was a bit miffed that the Hawks did not get some calls he thought should have gone their way or get a timeout with two seconds left in regulation after UK missed a shot.
“The only thing I talked to our guys about was can we have 16 united hawks against everybody and everything? And I think we did, including foul calls and timeouts that we called with two seconds left in the game that were not rewarded,” Lange said.
“But that’s okay. If you’re coming into this building, you have to do it. Before we’re going to get some of those calls, we have to earn the respect. Sometimes it’s winning and sometimes you can have a loss that’s actually pretty good for the program. We don’t think like that as coaches, but this was about us, not Kentucky.”
Lange was not taking anything away from Kentucky because he knows how dangerous the Cats are for various reasons.
“Athleticism, physicality, talent, Big Blue Nation, their ability to go from defense to offense as well as any team in the country and Cal stresses it,” Lange said. “They have always done that, they are good and they are good at half-court right now.
“I give them a lot of credit. He has done a great job with this group so early. They can turn that quickly (on steal and score) and I thought we took care of the ball fairly well. No turnover is ever a good turnover, but the ones that we had were not nearly as timely as we would have liked them to be and it is just a stampede they are out.”
One Response
I think that with the talent and the great head coach that we have,we could make a run come March.Coach Cal is a great coach and people need to get behind him and the team rather than bitch and cry cause everything doesn’t always go the way they want it to.He has done a fantastic job at UK but you still have people that think you are never supposed to lose a game when you put on that blue and white,I like that way of thinking but you have to be real also.I bleed blue and to me UK is on it’s way to another championship season,we have the talent,we sure have the right coach, now we have to have the fans that are true fans to get behind this team and coach and let the players play and Coach Cal do the coaching, and we the true fans to get behind this team and don’t try to help Cal coach,or talk trash because we might lose or play bad.No team is perfect, and all teams will have a bad game,no matter how we do,win or lose,we are still fans of Big Blue 💙, and we need to remember that.