Here’s everything John Calipari had to say after Kentucky’s loss to Tennessee
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Game day: No. 9 Tennessee 69, No. 5 Kentucky 62
Click below for more of the Herald-Leader’s and Kentucky.com’s coverage of Saturday’s men’s basketball game between Kentucky and Tennessee at the SEC Tournament in Tampa, Fla.
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Kentucky had a tough afternoon in the semifinals of the Southeastern Conference Tournament, losing to Tennessee by a score of 69-62 on Saturday.
The Wildcats shot just 34.4 percent from the field, made only two of 20 three-point shots, and played from behind for most of the day. Keion Brooks led the Cats with 19 points, Oscar Tshiebwe fouled out, and Kellan Grady was just 1-for-8 from the floor.
UK will now await its NCAA Tournament fate on Selection Sunday, and the Wildcats are likely to end up as a No. 2 seed. Here’s everything Kentucky Coach John Calipari said after the loss to Tennessee:
Opening statement: “Congratulations to Tennessee. They did a great job. They fought. We had our chances. We didn’t shoot the ball particularly well today. Some of that was us. Some of that was Tennessee, but we had our chances, and it shows what they — they didn’t let go of the rope. It shows what their coach is about, shows what their team is about.
“Now we get to get on a plane and go home and get ready for this next tournament. But this thing here, when I said we should have nine teams, look at it. Maybe I was right, again. Wait a minute. What about Florida? Texas A&M is killing everybody. Florida should have won that game. What does that mean about them?
“I mean, this league — Mississippi State, two at half. They have a chance. Then all of a sudden, James makes four threes. That ball game is a two-bucket game. This league has done some good stuff, and now let’s see what happens in the postseason. I’m hoping seven, maybe eight teams get in. And if that’s the case, the way you judge a league is what’s their record in the NCAA Tournament?
“If half your teams are three-quarters losing the first game, it kind of tells you that maybe you weren’t what everybody said. I have a lot of confidence in these teams.”
Q. Is this the type of day you can just flush and move on, or do you have concerns heading into March?
“Who did I get the last shot for that I thought could close the gap? I’m surprised somebody didn’t ask me, why would you do that? Because I really believe in him. Even when he is playing that way, I believe in him.
“I told him, why do you think I did that? Because you believe in me. Sometimes more than you’re believing in yourself. You miss two, and you think I’m going to miss ten. Davion does the same thing. I was all over Davion, just shoot the ball. Jacob, just shoot it. They were 1 for 16 amongst them. We were 2-for-20. Folks, we could have won this game.
“Think about what I’m saying. You can say, well, they didn’t — well, we may have been 2-for-25 or those guys may have been 1-for-19 if they shot more, but I still want them to shoot more, and Oscar is right. If you shoot it and you miss it, we have a beast standing under the basket. Just shoot it. If you are anywhere near my bench, if someone on my team ever says, well, he takes me out every time I miss a shot, look, you’re a liar. I’m right there. You lied. You need to ask for forgiveness.
“He tells you to shoot it, and you don’t shoot it. Don’t say he takes you out for misses. We didn’t — I like the fact we had a chance to win. I thought we were going to win. I went crazy because you got beat on a back door to lose the game? That means you stopped playing. You just stood up and stopped. Back door. And it’s like, wait a minute, do you really want to see somebody go, my fault? Like it’s my fault. What? The world knows it’s your fault. You don’t have to confirm it. They watched it.
“We had some of those plays that I was laughing. I’m, like, if we win this game, thank goodness it was under two minutes on that last out of bounds. Thank goodness. Because he had to go look. Everybody watched it and said why did you do that? That made it fun.”
Q. Cal, how much, if any, do you think sort of all the disruption to the lineup over the last four weeks, disrupted where you were offensively and how do you think you dial back in?
“I think we’re in really good shape. We got three guys at every position, so what I told them — I was going to tell them — and I did tell them before this tournament, you don’t have to play great because I’ll just play somebody else. I don’t even have to get mad. If you’re not ready to go, I’m just going to play somebody else. Just be ready next game.
“Then I was going to say, the only way that doesn’t work if eight of you play like crap. Then it doesn’t matter if we have a lot of guys. If you have a bunch of guys that didn’t play well, you’re not winning. We were 2-for-20. I think a couple them were air balls from good shooters, like the best shooter in the conference.
“So, look, I’ll watch the tape because it’s just what I do, but this we knew would be a physical bump-and-grind game, and I thought we held our own, but there were — when we had it to six, there were three plays back to back to back. You can’t win national championships on plays like that. You cannot because a good team will make you pay just like Tennessee made us pay. You can’t, and they were our mistakes. A back door, we were running a play. The guy went the wrong way. That like a quarterback goes to hand it off to the running back that went that way in a national championship game. They clobbered the quarterback. He fumbles, and they run, and you just lost the national title because you went the wrong way? We did one of those. It’s a good lesson for us.
“And I told them, look, plan to play great. I believe in this team. Let me ask you, if we would have pulled this off, what would everybody in the country say? Oh, my God, they just played like that and won? You do not want to play them. That’s what I told them after. We’re fine. Let’s go home. I would like to be home by 8:30 to see my dogs, kiss my dogs.”
Q. How do you think you should be seeded tomorrow?
“Probably be a two, maybe a three. Who knows? I’m not in the room, but we’ll see. My guess is it will be a very hard path because it always is.”
Q. Coach, your regular season belongs to the bigs. The tournament belongs to the guards. Do you have to have great guard play to survive and advance in the tournament?
“Yeah, but you better have a big, too. Yeah, you have really good guards, but your big is not good enough, well, you ain’t advancing either. You may go one or two rounds, but you’re not going to be that Elite 8, Sweet 16 team. We have both. We have four point guards. Three of them play together at times, most times. We have three, four different guys that could play at four, so if one doesn’t play well, I can go to another one and another one. Yesterday it was Jacob. Today it was Keion. We still had Davion, and I can also play Lance.
Lance played — again, you’re not saying that Oscar only played eight minutes in the first half. No one is saying anything, but that’s a fact. He played eight minutes, and the reason was I wanted to give us a chance to win, which I did by not playing him and giving him a third foul, so we had our chance. Best player in the country, and he fouls.”
Q. Cal, you have talked about how many SEC teams you think should get in. Do you think that y’all, Auburn and Tennessee have all made cases that they could be on that two seed line come tomorrow?
“Auburn may be on the one seed line. You know what, Tennessee has played so well, but they say they don’t do that anymore. Your last ten. They look at your body of work, you know, who you beat, your quad ones and all the other stuff they go with. I just wish they did some eye test, like watch. Forget about numbers. Do you know basketball? Watch the games.
“Tennessee, could they be a one? I don’t know. What have they — I haven’t — if you know me, I’m not seeing it, reading it, hearing about. I don’t really care. So our people were saying, hey, we have a chance at a one. I’m just trying to win a ball game. So what has Tennessee been? What has their seed line been? Could they move to a one? Maybe. If they’re saying we were a one, they beat us 2-for-20 and big guy out in the first half and some other stuff, but they beat us. And Auburn has had a great year.”
Q. Coach, back to when you guys went to the press a couple of possessions, did you feel like they were just too comfortable? What did you see there to finally go to the press there?
“We had to do anything to just kind of mix up the game and make a little run and put the pressure back on them. That’s why we did it. We did good. We had our chances.”
This story was originally published March 12, 2022 at 7:18 PM.
