Kentucky players were all smiles after beating Auburn. (Vicky Graff Photo)
How excited and proud was Kentucky coach John Calipari that his team put itself back into the Southeastern Conference race and greatly enhanced its NCAA Tournament resume with a 70-59 win over Auburn Saturday night?
Not long after the final buzzer, a jubilant Calipari had his postgame press conference and got the perfect question to start when asked about beating Ole Miss and Auburn in consecutive games more with defense than Kentucky’s normal high-powered offense.
Here is the long and detailed answer he gave:
“Well, (Auburn) made a run and I wanted them to play defense, instead of letting them get out and go. So this will be game-to-game stuff. You feel the game.
“What do you have to do to win the game? Who needs to be in? In some games it’s this guy, other games it’s another guy. The guy today, and who I keep coming back to March, today was Antonio (Reeves). When one guy can go do what he did, in those games, it’s huge.
“Well, we also have Rob (Dillingham), we have Reed (Sheppard), we have D.J. (Wagner). We have multiple guys that can go and do stuff like that. Now, the question will be … The defense, they know they’ve got to get better. They know.
“They know we’ve got to rebound balls in traffic, we’ve got to do stuff. But, I know there are people that would say stuff to try to hurt this thing, but the reality of it is, what did you see today? Now, what could you write? They’re so bad defensively.
“That’s a top-10 offensive team. And it’s a top-10 defensive team. The reason you don’t want to play wild, (is) they get steals and that’s what gives them gas. If you don’t turn it over, and we turned it over 12 times, and D.J. and Rob had four each. So that meant the other guys weren’t turning it over that much.
“(We) held a top-10 team to 30 percent (shooting from the field) and 18 percent (shooting from 3), I don’t know. I guess we could do better.
“Did you see I went zone on a possession? Just to do it. I said, ‘How about we go zone one time? Let’s just try it.’
‘We’ve got nine stops in a row coach.’ I said ‘Stop, let’s just try it. You guys want to try it? Yeah.’ Go zone.
“The reason it works (is) we don’t know what we’re doing. So how the hell can you prepare for something that we don’t even know where we’re going to go?”
Welcome back swaggy Calipari and with the way his team played, why shouldn’t he feel that good?
7 Responses
Be careful Larry. Positive articles are less popular and will get less responses. the Haters are going to Hate. No matter what! I didn’t see this coming. Few did. Cat79 did. He is now my hero!!
Not sure why anyone would be negative after a quality win like this one but they have a narrative that they need to push. I hope Cal stays forever just so they continue to cry baby cry!!!!!
That was beautiful. A bit perplexing as to how a switch flipped. But better late than never. The most aggressive team won that game . If that team that we saw last night continues that style of play they can definitely make a deep run. Good job cats.
I knew if they would bring there A game they would have a chance to beat Auburn and that’s exactly what they did. This team has too much upside in what they have endure this season. I was hoping they would turn it round and looks like they may have. Just got to be caution still got take care of business as we’re down the end of the stretch of the regular season. Go Big Blue!!
79, you did call it when nobody else did. I don’t know what you were smoking, but keep on smoking it. It was good to see Bruce Pearl take a whooping like he did, he usually puts the whooping on us. I wish I could say that we have changed as a team, but we haven’t and Calipari is still Calipari.
I look at the season and the numbers and saw that we were held 20 points below our average. I also did not see any other time where we held a team that far below their average. Honestly, I think Auburn choked. There are 6 games left and we will find out if we have grown up or just merely got lucky last night. I hope for the former, but I know Calipari and fear the latter. Regardless, it was a great win. You might want to go buy a lottery ticket, lol.
Barry just gotta have faith in the team and yesterday my gut was telling me that the cats would win.. I was reading good vibes what this team was doing prior to the Mississippi game and it carry over to this game as well. Hopefully it’s a sign of good things down the stretch.
79, u are precious–i love u! 🥰 There was a day and time where indeed being a KY fan was equal to living in a constant state of euphoria that u live in every day!
Kentucky won this game because of tenacity. They had the will to win so they won. I won alot of money off the game. I’m just mad that I took the points instead of going straight up.