Calipari on his team: "They're not going to surrender"

[caption id="attachment_175868" align="alignnone" width="600"] (Photo by Andy Lyons/Getty Images)[/caption] Cincinnati's plan was clearly to make the game as physical as possible. Shaq Thomas told reporters that, for the most part, they were successful in the first half. "I think we did a good job in the first half, and I think we were in the game, and we just made a couple mental errors that we need to fix." "I don't think they handled our physicality very well throughout the game," Jermaine Sanders said. "Mental lapses that happened on the offensive end was why we lost the game. It wasn't nothing that they did." Okay, sure. Go with that if it makes you feel better. Meanwhile, John Calipari was pleased with how his team stayed classy when Cincinnati tried their hardest to drag them down. "I got a great, great group. They handle things that are coming at them. People play them physical. No one's going to surrender. They're not going to surrender. So if you have to fight, you got to fight. I mean, I'm not going to lose going down not swinging. That means the games get physical," Cal said. "I still have the youngest team in the field, and I would say one of the ways is try to get after them physically and see if you can rattle them. They have handled all this stuff with class. They've done a great job. They don't respond. They just have an even keel about them, which is kind of nice." Yes, it is. What else do they have, Cal? "This team has a will to win. They have a heart. The good news is there's enough guys that, if two or three aren't playing well, we can still survive," Cal said. "What they learned today is we don't have to shoot the ball well, and we can still survive."