CJ Fredrick reveals how next man up mentality led to win vs. Florida

After getting blown out by Alabama on the road only to return home and lose to pitiful South Carolina at home, the Kentucky basketball season looked to be on its last legs. However, the Wildcats used that rock-bottom feeling as motivation to improve. Nearly a month later and Kentucky hasn’t lost an SEC game since the catastrophe against the Gamecocks.

In their most recent win, the ‘Cats staved off a feisty Florida team after they made a late rally once Oscar Tshiebwe fouled out. Alas, Kentucky had several guys hit huge free throws down the stretch to ultimately seal the deal, including Daimion Collins, who has been absent from the lineup in most of the recent wins, but was called on when Oscar went out and came through in the biggest moment of his career so far.

After the game, Wildcat guard CJ Fredrick pointed to the team’s resiliency and togetherness as reasons why they were able to hang on in a game that likely would have lost earlier in the year.

“Yeah, you know, we’re resilient,” shared Fredrick. “Towards the end of the game, we had guys make big free throws. But we were struggling in the beginning of the year to make some free throws. But, you know, we’re making our free throws at the end of the game.”

Fredrick also emphasized the next man up mentality that Kentucky has grown to play with.

“And then that next man up mentality — Oscar goes out with five fouls and Daimion comes in doesn’t miss a beat, makes a huge free throw. And it’s just believing in each other and executing. I thought we did a pretty good job. You know, they started to make some threes towards the end of that game and we were able to come back and execute and get baskets to kind of stop that. If we don’t come down and execute and make baskets, who knows. Obviously, that next man up mentality, we’re just believing in each other.”

CJ Fredrick was then asked what changed a month ago where Kentucky was finally able to come together as a team and start growing together. Here was his answer:

“Yeah that’s always it’s always an emphasis. You know, our thing is just trying to win every single day. We understood we were kind of in a bad spot a month ago and the emphasis was just on, you know what, you don’t look in the past, don’t look in the future you only are guaranteed one day. I mean, we’ve got to do everything we can to win that day. And I think coaches and us, we bought into that, and I think we’re really taking that serious.”

Win every day. That’s a classic John Calipari phrase. Good to see he has this year’s group finally buying into that mindset.