John Calipari regrets canceling shoot-around prior to Tennessee loss

John Calipari is a creature of habit. A superstitious head coach, from his lucky watch to UK’s uniform choice, he rarely breaks routine. That is why he spent most of his 6-minute appearance on ESPN’s Selection Sunday Show kicking himself for canceling Saturday’s pre-Tennessee shoot-around.

“We hit a hot team in Tennessee and I kind of screwed up. We didn’t do a shoot-around,” Calipari said. “My gut said, ‘We got to go shoot around. We’ve done it all year.’ And we don’t go shoot around and we have some of the guys play as bad as they played. A lot of it was Tennessee.”

Kentucky only scored 22 points in the first half of SEC Tournament semifinal against Tennessee, UK’s lowest-scoring half of the season. The top-ranked three-point shooting team in the SEC went just 2-for-20 from long range. Calipari did not reveal why he canceled the shoot-around, but one can surmise it was because of the late Friday night victory over Vanderbilt that did not end until 10:25 pm ET.

“The last game, I’m putting it on myself, No shoot-around was the dumbest thing. I can’t believe I did it and I didn’t go with my gut and we didn’t do it. But in that game when I watched it, a lot of guys were doing stuff they hadn’t done in a while.” Calipari added: “I’m just saying, the clutter — shut the phones off. Don’t listen to anybody. Let’s just be together. Let’s do this.“

Calipari wants to keep his team focused on each other. His players do not need to look ahead to Murray State or Baylor or whoever else is in the Wildcats’ way to New Orleans. For now, their attention is all on Saint Peter’s, and most importantly, moving on from a bad loss in Tampa.

“This team fights and they try and they’re together. They’re great teammates, which makes this fun. I’m having fun every day I walk into a gym, whether I’m coaching a game or coaching practice. I’m having fun.”