That’s ‘the way basketball goes,’ Herro says of famine-to-feast shift in his shooting

Kentucky’s two exhibition games saw freshman Tyler Herro go from famine to feast. A week after making one of eight shots against Transylvania, he made six of 12 against Indiana-Pennsylvania on Friday night.

If anything, the contrast was even more striking from three-point range: 0-for-4 against Transy, 5-for-7 against IUP.

Herro cited no great adjustment, no sage coaching advice, no change of any sort as an explanation.

“It’s just the way basketball goes sometimes,” he said. “You have an off night. ... I just stuck to everything I do normally, and I come out and bounce back.”

Herro acknowledged that making his first three three-point shots helped. The first came 15 seconds into the game.

“Making the first shot always helps the shooter,” he said. “It feels good to see the first one go through.”

Herro, who had 34 points in the Blue-White Game and was UK’s leading scorer in the Bahamas, has caused the UK coaches to regard him as someone with abundant confidence.

“I think I’m just regular confident,” he said. “They’re thinking I’m super confident. But I just shoot the ball, and I think it’s going to go in every time.”

Cal on football

UK Coach John Calipari saluted the football team on the eve of its game against Georgia. First place in the SEC East will be at stake.

“I’m happy for Mark (Stoops) and his staff,” Calipari said. “I’m happy for those players. I’m so happy the guys that came back can say, ‘It’s an experience that I’ll live with the rest of my life.’

“They’re a team that feels good and confident about themselves.”

Calipari said he saw the UK football players as feeling empowered to lead their team.

“These guys are balling now,” Calipari said. “And Georgia’s really good. Like, Georgia’s really good. You ready for this? We’re really good, too. Our defense, woof! So it should be a great game.”

His basketball team will not practice at the same time in order to watch the football game, Calipari said.

Point guards assessed

Calipari suggested that neither Immanuel Quickley nor Ashton Hagans has solidified a hold on the starting point guard role. He termed both as too anxious at this early stage.

“They’re two different point guards ...,” Calipari said. “Immanuel went from being too aggressive on the ball to not being aggressive enough. There’s an in-between we need him to be.”

As for Hagans, “I thought Ashton did some good things,” Calipari said. “They kept him out of the paint, which is hard to do.”

‘We’re good’

IUP Coach Joe Lombardi reminded reporters that his team is capable of competing. The Crimson Hawks have won their division of the Pennsylvania State Athletic Conference eight of the last nine seasons, and they are favored to win it again this coming season.

“We have good players, and we have a bunch of Division I players on our team, guys ...,” Lombardi said in his postgame news conference. “This isn’t a run-of-the-mill Division II team.”

Center Jaboco Diaz, a native of the Canary Islands, was capable of playing “a lot of places in the Southeastern Conference,” Lombardi said.

Diaz led IUP with 17 points.

Etc.

Lombardi sized up the attendance at his postgame news conference and said, “We don’t get this many people at some road games, let alone in the press room.” ... Lombardi’s oldest son, Dominic, is an assistant coach at Morehead State. The younger Lombardi began his coaching career as a graduate assistant at UK. “In some small way, I feel like I’m part of the Kentucky family,” the elder Lombardi said.

This story was originally published November 3, 2018 at 12:31 AM.