Vicky Graff Photo
Sometimes there are Kentucky fans who wonder if losing bothers coach John Calipari as much as it bothers the UK fan base.
“Losing beats you down but I can’t let it beat me down long. (My wife) Ellen (Calipari) will tell you. When I come home and the next morning, by the afternoon I’m good,” Calipari said after UK’s win over Arkansas Saturday.
“And I’ll be honest. If I would get up early and go to the office and watch the tape and get started, I’d be fine. But I like to be in misery for at least five hours. And I’m in misery. And then I get over it and you know, individual meetings or whatever.”
Calipari told Tom Leach on the UK Radio Network postgame show that his team has to play loose and free.
“When you are playing not to lose at Kentucky and the other team is playing with nothing to lose you are losing those games. We have got to get our team in the frame of mind that we win or we learn and move on,” Calipari said.
The Kentucky coach said he can’t worry how he feels even though a “loss is worse than it was 15 years ago” but he has to get over it because he has a young team.
“If I am feeling like crap, how are they feeling? I want to suffer for at least five hours. I want it to be so miserable that I am going to do everything I can to help the team win because I don’t want to feel like that again,” Calipari said.
“If things go bad am I throwing them (under the bus) or taking it on myself. It’s me. Don’t blame them, blame me. If you don’t like what is going on, throw it on me.”
Calipari said he has “people’s children” to look after and cannot worry how he feels.
“You can’t. If I did, I’d be under the covers some. If I listen to anybody who’s never coached who wants to criticize me personally. I can’t do the job with these kids. So losing, for me, I’ve spoiled not only everybody but myself — like you are supposed to win every game. What? No one wins every game,” Calipari said.
“Losing stinks probably even more so now than it did 10 years ago. But the winning is still unbelievable.”
6 Responses
Cry me a river about how tough this Fraud has it.
Perhaps he should be more concerned about UK’s program and the difference between winning and losing, and the characteristics of a team that can legitimately compete for championships.
He’s getting us ready for the Ls that he knows are coming.
That Doug shows sucks..
Losing beats you down Cal…Really? You might have a hard time selling that to BBN.
Calipari has 10 million reasons not to care about losing.
I knew before I even got to the comment section that all the loser Cal haters would reply to this article. The ONLY frauds are these so called fans. Go Cats!!!!!