CJ Fredrick, Jacob Toppin on how Kentucky regrouped to upset Tennessee
In just his second game back from injury, CJ Fredrick helped lead the Cats to their biggest victory of the season. The senior guard played a season-high 37 minutes in Kentucky’s win over No. 5 Tennessee, finishing with 13 points, including three 3-pointers. Two of those threes came in the first half to lead Kentucky back from an 8-0 deficit. Fredrick scored eight straight points to put the Cats up 13-10, their first lead since the LSU game back on Jan. 3. In the second half, he sank another big three to break a tie and put Kentucky up by three with 5:37 remaining.
After the 63-56 upset, a jubilant Fredrick sat down with Goose Givens to recap the win, which he dedicated to both the Big Blue Nation and John Calipari.
“BBN, that was for you. We’ve been through a lot right now. And this team, I love this team so much. After that South Carolina loss, we came together and there was no doubt that we were going to come in here and get a win. And that was the mindset every day in practice. Coach puts so much time in and he wants to win so bad. That work paid off tonight. So that was for all the BBN, that was for Coach, that’s for everybody.”
“How about CJ today?” John Calipari said in his postgame press conference. “The impact he had on the game and the mind, and the talk.”
Players-only meeting helped Cats regroup
Morale was low in the Big Blue Nation coming off back-to-back losses to Alabama and South Carolina. The loss to the Gamecocks especially felt like rock bottom. Fredrick peeled back the curtain during his conversation with Givens, describing the atmosphere around the program since Tuesday night.
“Those two days of practice and especially today, you know, Coach said, ‘Don’t even worry about the outcome. Just go out there and fight. Compete, fight and give it everything you have out there and good things will happen.’ And this team, like I said before, I love this team. And we just competed and we fought for 40 minutes, man and it was a great win.”
Jacob Toppin told reporters about a players-only meeting that helped the Cats get back on the same page.
“The game is mostly mental. It’s about having individual confidence. Obviously, the coaching staff has confidence in us but if you don’t have confidence in yourself, it’s going to be very hard to play at a high level. If your mind is clear, then your game is clear. It makes it so much easier. A lot of guys were struggling but we came together as a group and it helped a lot. It helped a lot, talking about some issues personally and as a team and it helped us get a W today.”
Toppin recalled a conversation with Fredrick in the training room yesterday about the parity in college basketball this season (which is definitely on display today).
“I was like, ‘Listen. This is going to be the definition of college basketball. We just lost to South Carolina and we’re going to go to Tennessee and we’re going to beat them.’ And that’s the definition of college basketball. Anybody can beat anybody. That’s the conversation we had. We all came in here understanding that if we fought and if we did what we needed to do as a team, we could win this game.”
John Calipari said the staff also took the players’ phones and iPads the night before the game to ensure they blocked the clutter out.
“Here’s what happened today,” Calipari said. “We defended and fought like my teams normally do. We haven’t been that to this point. They made a commitment to each other that they would fight this game and it was between them. I wasn’t in a couple of the meetings they had. Happy for them.”
Fredrick’s postgame speech
After a rough month, Kentucky finally got to celebrate a big win. The players doused John Calipari with water once he entered the room and Fredrick said a few words, which he shared with Givens.
“We were in the locker room and I told the guys, we’ve been through a lot and I love each and every single one of you,” Fredrick said. “So, we go from here and this is where we go. We use this as momentum to keep the same mindset every day when we’re coming into practice. We keep believing in each other and we let our work do the talk. And we come out here and we just compete and fight.”
“A lot of love,” Toppin said of the mood in the locker room. “Like I said, we’ve been through a lot together and it helps. It helps having a win like this. We got in, gave each other a big hug, gave Coach a big hug. Now, we’ve got to move forward and keep each other going.”
“What’s happened to this team is guys are so engaged in getting their game, if they’re not playing well, they can’t play for us because they’re not thinking about us,” Calipari said. “Today, every guy was locked in and focused on us.”
Keep it up, Cats.
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