Q&A: What John Calipari said after the UK-Northern Kentucky game

The full transcript from coach John Calipari’s press conference after Kentucky’s victory over Northern Kentucky in the NCAA Tournament on Friday night:

John Calipari: “Folks, can you make this really quick? It’s 12:30. A college kid shouldn’t be playing at 12:30. The old man that’s coaching their team has to watch tapes tonight. Can you just ask a couple questions? We shouldn’t be playing this late, but that’s another issue for another day.”

Q: John, what did you think of your team’s performance in light of the SEC Tournament seemed to be an uptick?

John Calipari: “We’ll be fine. I mean, you get up 18 and, you know, again, it’s (12:30) in the morning, and we’re playing. And then you have to give Northern credit. The thing they did all season is make 3s. And what I said at halftime, the one thing I’m worried about is they missed a bunch of 3s that they normally make, or the game would have been closer. And then late in the game, they made them all. So they made the game close.

“Hats off to John (Brannen) and the job he’s done at Northern and their program and school and, you know, it was — the first one under the belt. We’ll be fine. I mean, we know how tough the next opponent is. Wichita is tough physically. Veterans, they play hard. They’re a very, very talented team, and we know that, and we’re going to have to play better to be in the game with them.”

Q. What about Bam’s performance? How much did he sort of get you guys over the hump?

John Calipari: “Well, again, what’s great about him is he’s making free throws. And our whole thing was we’re going at him. We knew they’d trap, which they did.

“But he still ended up getting balls, and they fouled him. Just the stuff down the stretch. You know we use clock. We grind it out. We threw two quick passes away. ‘Like what are you doing?’ which gave them a chance. Well, that’s freshmen, so I will tell you this is all a learning curve. We know we’ve got to play better, no question. I expect that we will.”

Q. Coach, was there one particular thing that frustrated you? I noticed that as the game was going on, you seemed to be coaching this as if it was a tie game or maybe you were down?

John Calipari: “Because I’m looking at all these games to try to tell them I wasn’t just worried about this game. You’re worried about playing in this tournament and how you’re going to have to play to win. And you can’t just think that there are certain things you can do in each round that goes by is tougher and tougher and tougher.

“So I was coaching them to say this is not how you do this. We talked after the game. But I want them to enjoy the win. They’ll be sleeping here in another 45 minutes, but they can enjoy it for another 45 minutes anyway.”

This story was originally published March 18, 2017 at 1:50 AM with the headline "Q&A: What John Calipari said after the UK-Northern Kentucky game."