TRANSCRIPT: John Calipari after win over VMI

Q. When a guy goes off for 35 like that are you frustrated with your defense, or do you just tip your hat to the kid?
JOHN CALIPARI: He made some crazy ones now. And Eric just said that he was one off the record from another kid that played against our team that I’ve coached. And how many did — what was the other kid, the Texas A & M kid? He scored 40. So I’m a pretty good defensive coach with high-scoring players. I was really impressed that we played as well as we did against the zone. Because you understand it’s, again, we haven’t spent much time on it based on we’re trying to get to where we’re comfortable how we’re playing against man-to-man.

The first half I thought we had our chances to spread it out a little bit, we held them to 40 percent. Second half I think we got tired. They were running us around and guys just stopped. All of a sudden they’re shooting layups. And but hats off, I thought Dan did a great job and those kids made shots. And it wasn’t just the one kid making shots. They made 19. So there were nine others that we left corners, we did that three times. We left a corner, which if you know for 10 years I’ve been here, we don’t leave corners. This team leaves corners. We started trapping late and I guess the fans are looking at me like why wouldn’t you just start trapping this kid? And probably should have. But won’t be the first — last time or first time that we need to play a little bit different. But, again, I was happy for PJ, 19 and 19 or 18 and 19. I was happy for Reid. Quade played really well. Quade’s playing really good basketball right now. He really is.

Q. What should we make that your guys did not get caught up in a three-point shooting contest? You guys seemed to go inside, use your size.
JOHN CALIPARI: Yeah, they’re trying. Again, the only thing that bothered me a couple times is we had some ball stoppers versus the zone. The ball’s got to fly around that court. But again, we haven’t worked on it. And when it flew around the court we either posted it easy against the spread defense or we got a drive. Look, we shot 50 percent and only had 11 turnovers. So I mean we did some good stuff. We shot 35 percent from the three and we still have a couple guys that can’t make a three right now. But there was good. We have 18 offensive rebounds. We out-rebounded them by 21 rebounds. There was some good here except they went crazy on the threes.

Now, I’ve got to go and watch this tape and watch every single three. Because you guys that do the numbers, if you look historically from my time here, my guess is our three-point shooting defense is usually around 30 percent. 29, 31, right now we’re probably at 40 percent. And so some of that is if you ask me how much have you worked on that, we haven’t done much and we haven’t talked to them about it much. So now we’re going to have to look and say, our league, everybody’s shooting, they’re making 10 threes, nine threes, eight threes, seven, the least amount is like seven. So if we go into a league and we cannot guard the three, we’re going to have problems. So but thank goodness, what’s the date? Is this still November? Tell me it’s still November. Is it barely? What is it? Okay. Tomorrow’s my daughter’s birthday. It’s not. It’s not the 19th. It’s the — it’s the 23rd. I know when her birthday is. I hope it’s the 23rd.

Q. Let’s hope you got it right.
(Laughter.)

JOHN CALIPARI: Why are you laughing? You’re supposed to be with me. You’re not supposed to be laughing at me, Eric.

Q. What do you like about Quade’s doing now compared to even say two weeks ago?
JOHN CALIPARI: I think he’s really playing hard. He’s really defending, he’s trying. And then he has a knack offensively for making baskets. And if you put it in his hands he’ll normally, as long as it’s not against a set defense, if that ball moves and he gets it and it’s a two-man game, something good is going to happen. And late in the game he will make a shot and he will make free throws. He’s proven that. So he’s doing what we’re asking. He’s doing better every day. And in practice right now my guess is he’s working harder than anybody else.

Q. You were in a defensive set about midway through the first half or later than that where your guards were denying the ball to the other guards when the big had it at the top. What forced y’all to move away from that, because you seemed to be running them into shot blockers? Were ya’ll fouling them too much, or what was going on there?
JOHN CALIPARI: No, we got tired. It’s not like I changed what we were doing. We were trying to fight over those and wall up a little bit with the big. We were saying let’s not give them threes, make them bounce it, we’re deflecting, we’re getting turnovers. And then if you look we end up creating only 13 turnovers and my guess is that at half if they didn’t make a three they turned it over or we deflected. So, but again, it’s the discipline that you need, this team doesn’t have yet, of full possessions, of every trip down the floor. And it doesn’t mean that they’re not going to make a shot. They made five or six, seven shots that you’re like, dude, that’s almost at half court. But we had hands down and we’re talking in every huddle, you have to have your hands up on the guy. And his hands were down and the kid was feeling it. I tell you what, hats off to him. He made 10-16. I haven’t seen that.

Q. Where does this team rank in terms of forcing you to have defensive concentration for the full 30 seconds, and how hard that is for young guys to get a handle on that?
JOHN CALIPARI: Well the biggest thing is, if we do what we normally do and they take 38 threes, they’re going to make 10 of those and you’re getting run outs and layups and the score’s different. They just kept making them. And then we had a couple breakdowns late. We lose a three-point, the kid in the corner, like you total denial, why would you leave him? Well, I had my hand up. Why did you leave him? Have you not watched the game? And then we come down and make an offensive error, which gives them a chance to beat us. It’s a great lesson. It’s a great lesson in that we still won. Like I told the guys after, when somebody makes 19 threes, you win that game? I don’t care who it is. They made 19 threes and we won the game, which means offensively and rebounding and our post-up stuff, we did some good stuff. Like I said, we’ve got a long way to go. This is, I hate to tell you, this is going to be a grind. And until — we’re a little out of — everybody’s trying to establish themselves, which is a natural thing. And as they do that it’s hard to really be in sync defensively. And even offensively at times.

Q. What was your thinking on bringing Reid off the bench and EJ starting? And how did you think that played out?
JOHN CALIPARI: I will watch the tape. I don’t know. I thought EJ fouled twice, so obviously it didn’t work and that way, but I just, we tried the other ones, I said, let’s look at this. I’m trying to make it — okay, Nick comes off the bench, he gets 19. PJ comes off the bench, he gets 25. Who cares who starts. Unless your ego and it’s not about our team, who really cares. Today Reid came off the bench. He had 22. I mean would you rather have five and start? Yeah. Because I like that introduction. Really? You like the introduction. Yeah, the introduction. Did you see the introduction? They cheered for me. It’s unbelievable. Yeah, but you had five points. Yeah, but I’m okay. What? You have 22, 19 rebounds — who cares who starts? Especially right now where I’m just trying to figure out this team.

Q. You said after the Southern Illinois game that you felt like you were kind of getting a handle and kind of know what you wanted to do. After two more games do you still feel that way?
JOHN CALIPARI: We’re getting better. Oh, thank God. But I’ve had to go back to day one of training camp and start all over. So it’s, it took us three weeks, four weeks to get to where we were and now it’s going to probably take that long to get back to it, to where we need to be. And every time we were working on lunging, I’m telling you, I watched the — we lunged, we did everything we wanted — and then there’s — you only got four fingers and a thumb and there’s water. And so you — and then all of a sudden three-point shooting defense, okay it’s shooting out, now you’re trying to — I mean it’s what it is for us. But I do know this, we’re physically tough, we can rebound like crazy, I love the fact that we can throw it to the post. I love the fact that we’re an offensive rebounding team. I’m going to say it again, we should be a better three-point shooting team. I mean we had two guys that I would expect to make threes go 1-6, Immanuel and Tyler. That’s 1-6. I would expect them to make 4-6. And so we, it’s feeling comfortable and getting Tyler I was begging him the whole game to shoot. They’re in the zone, man, shoot it, catch it and get ready to shoot. But it’s — this is a process and that — I wish we could skip steps, I tried, how did that work? Doesn’t work. Now we’re back to where we need to be and.

Q. When somebody like PJ goes off for 18 rebounds do you say, okay, son, that’s your new standard?
JOHN CALIPARI: Why don’t you ask him that? Is he coming out? Good. Is that your new standard. If I’m PJ — because what it shows is motor. It shows motor. Okay. So if I’m PJ, I’m rebounding against nine players, their five and four of ours. That’s just me. And what a great thing to be selfish about, wouldn’t you say? Go get every one. But I’ll tell you, again, hard because you got to work, you go to the fight, you’re in there battling people, and there’s going to be guys who are going to just say, block out him on every possession. And early in the game it’s going to be a fight, as the game goes on you’ll get by a guy, get a couple, get a dunk or you can say, this guy’s never going to let me get by. That’s that next level for he and Reid and EJ and even Nick.

Q. At the 5:30 mark in the first half you guys went on a 12-0 run. Eight lead changes up to that point, it was a one-point game, what were you guys able to do during that stretch to really put the —
JOHN CALIPARI: I’ll have to watch. I thought we defended better, they missed some shots, we got some break outs. I thought we had a steal, a run through steal, we did some stuff, but I’ll have to watch the tape. I knew we got the game stretched out and it got to 19 and I’m thinking, okay, let’s get this to 25. All of a sudden you turn around it’s 14. 13, then it’s 12. What the? What in the world? And again it’s hard because I know we played pretty good against the zone that we haven’t — that’s the first time we played against zone. We play against ourselves, but and we haven’t done it much, so I was pleased with that and again there was things I was pleased with, but we just, it’s, this is going to be a process and it’s not easy, it’s not easy for these kids, it’s not easy for our fans. And I would tell our fans, I said it on the radio, you should never be upset with these kids, they’re 17 and 18 and 19, they’re doing exactly what I’m trying to get them to do. Be mad at me. Be mad at me. You don’t need to be mad at the kids. Cheer them on, it’s hard to play here. I mean, VMI came in, this was a big deal and when their kid, Bubba, Bubba goes nuts, believe me, his grandchildren will be watching that video in Rupp Arena in front of — I mean, that’s every game we play is this way. And so they don’t need anything extra, they just need to just get better and you’ll break through and try to continue to talk on those terms. And here was the other thing. That locker room, even though there’s some guys that really didn’t play well, they better be happy for PJ, happy for Reid, happy for Quade, hugging those guys. So when you play well they hug you. That’s a learning process too. If I don’t play well I’m mad. We won. We won a game we easily could have lost. So anyway, thanks, guys.

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