Amid a bad run for Kentucky basketball, players stuck by Calipari. ‘That was for Coach.’
It wasn’t necessary to know exactly what had happened last Tuesday night in Rupp Arena. All anyone had to do was listen to the strain in CJ Fredrick’s voice and see the pain on the Kentucky basketball player’s face to realize something pretty awful had just gone down.
The Wildcats had been defeated — on their home court, no less — by a South Carolina team rated among the worst in major-conference college basketball. And this had come three days after Alabama had beaten Kentucky by 26 points.
Even before that South Carolina loss, UK Coach John Calipari was under fire, with a good deal of the complaints coming from a vocal segment of the Kentucky fan base wishing him gone.
Fredrick was plenty upset last Tuesday when talking about his team’s shortcomings over the previous two games. But it seemed to bring a new level of anguish when someone mentioned the heat that Calipari had been catching.
“It’s not fair,” Fredrick said with conviction.
The senior guard — now in his second year with Calipari as his coach — launched into a full-throated defense of the embattled Kentucky leader.
“He’s coming in every single day with a positive attitude,” Fredrick said. “That man does not stop working. He loves us, and he will do anything to win. And that’s why I love going to war with him. … I have nothing but love and tremendous respect for Coach Cal.”
Losing basketball games is never easy, especially for a team with the type of seemingly realistic national championship expectations held by this UK squad. When a season goes south, bad things can happen. Players can turn on one another. Players can tune out the coaching staff. The situation can get out of hand rather quickly.
Amid all the outside hubbub regarding these Wildcats and speculation on Calipari’s future, it was interesting to hear veteran players like Fredrick, Oscar Tshiebwe and Jacob Toppin repeatedly go out of their way to unleash wholehearted defenses of the Kentucky head coach.
And anyone who was listening shouldn’t have been surprised by the scene in the visitors’ locker room at Thompson-Boling Arena four days later.
In a video released by UK shortly after the Cats stunned fifth-ranked Tennessee on the road Saturday, players were joyfully surrounding Calipari — basically had him pinned into one corner of the locker room — jumping up and down, yelling in delight, and dousing their head coach with water.
When a giddy Calipari briefly broke loose from the celebration, Fredrick closed back in and gave him a full-on hug.
“We were happy for each other, obviously, that we were able to perform like that and get a win,” Fredrick said Monday of the locker room atmosphere. “But we were so happy for him and this staff. For guys who come in here every single day and see him every single day — the outside view, you don’t really get to see what he’s like every single day. And it’s really easy to judge someone’s character and judge someone off their wins and losses.
“But when you see somebody every day, and you see how much he cares about his players and how much he’s driven to win and how he’ll do anything for us — that’s why you saw the emotion for him. Because we see that every single day. And there’s no other coach in the country that we would rather play for and go to war with than Coach Cal.”
Toppin also referenced the negative attention Calipari had been receiving during his comments immediately after the Tennessee game.
“He’s a great coach,” Toppin said. “We love him. He sticks up for his players, and he’s never going to back down from anybody.”
Freshman Adou Thiero was emptying his water bottle onto Calipari as furiously as anyone in UK’s locker room video. He said he didn’t know whose idea it was — someone just announced over the din of the winning locker room that they should do it — but he was happy to join in.
“The locker room — it was very fun,” Thiero said. “We got in there, we were all hyped. It was just great to get that feeling. Everyone was like, ‘We’re gonna pour water on Cal.’ … So I got my water bottle and threw it on him.”
Fredrick also addressed the team in the locker room once the celebration was over. He said Monday that he told his teammates they’d already been through a lot together, that he loved them all, and that Kentucky’s season was only going up from there.
He also said that, before the Cats got off the airplane in Knoxville, their head coach had a message for them: “Leave your worries on this plane,” Calipari told his team.
“And right when we got off the plane, we knew we were gonna win the game,” Fredrick claimed.
As soon as the Cats had conquered the Vols, the UK player interviewed on the postgame radio show was Fredrick, and the emotional swing in his voice from Tuesday to Saturday was striking.
“BBN, that was for you,” he said with excitement. “We’ve been through a lot right now, and this team — I love this team so much. You know, after that South Carolina loss, we came together, and there was no doubt that we were gonna come in here and get a win. And that was the mindset every day in practice. Coach puts so much time in, and he wants to win so bad. And, you know, that work paid off tonight. So that was for all of BBN. That was for Coach. That was for everybody.”
