John Calipari Quotes (106 Quotes)

If he comes back and played like he did against us, then he'll put himself in a better position in the 2007 draft. They were good with him. They'll have a chance with him back. Look, he killed us with 30.

For us to get a first seed, it just doesn't happen. Well, it's never happened here before. It's hard. There are only four teams that get this. I'm really proud for the respect that the committee has shown toward us.

It was a great win for them, a great win for our league and for their program. We may play them one more time.

They're not a normal 16th seed. They're just not that, and everybody knows it. That's why everybody is saying this is the upset and all those things.

He made runners, he made them when they bumped him, he made them inside. He rebounded the ball. He did a fairly good job of defending. We (isolated) him about 10 straight times, and about nine of them, we got something good either he scored or got somebody else something.

What I'm seeing now, what I saw at Massachusetts, it's like the machine is up and running now. But it's taken six years. At Mass, it took me five.

The zone bothered us more than it should have. Our guard play was very tentative. I don't know why. ... We will have to go look at the tape and take a look at it. But, it was a heck of a basketball game.

Darius was ridiculous. He didn't miss a shot, folks. He gets 21, and you wouldn't even know it. Was that the softest 21 you've ever seen Unbelievable. He's legitimate.

Any time we take that many 3s, we're not winning.

This wasn't about money because if it was I wouldn't be standing here. You're sitting here and you have a staff and their families, and then you have your other family -- those 13 or 14 basketball players. And at the end of the day there are a lot of young people pinning their hopes on what we do. We have a good group of young people, and I'm ecstatic about coaching them.

They are a very good team and they aren't your normal 16-seed. Everybody knows tat and everybody is talking about that. They are saying that this is the upset because they are not the typical 16-seed. They have seniors, they have (junior forward Caleb) Green inside, and they are as big and athletic as we are. That concerns me.

Twenty-one turnovers and we got beat to every ball again. I'm just worried because it's not hitting home. We went after balls with one hand. Theywill run a sprint drill in practice, which is a killer, for each one-handed catch they made. It's got to stop.

Sometimes I get a little stunned. Wow It took us six years.

If you were a player and you knew you were in the top 10 right now in the draft, would you not play to get to the top five, in other words shoot every ball, try to score 30 Say, 'OK, you think Morrison is good, watch me. He's not doing that. How unique is

It was a team in crisis. Meetings do nothing. Last year we had a crisis every other week.

They (UAB) didn't go away, and they had shots to get right back into the game and missed some shots late. I thought the rebounding edge is what put us over the top.

Obviously I didn't make the game fast enough. I didn't coach up to snuff. So, you know, it's a little bit of everything. We move on.

They think they're supposed to win. It makes me laugh. They're looking at me, like, 'Would you calm down

This is a hard game to prepare for. They run too much stuff, they hold the ball. Our guys, they have no idea they're not going to run with us.

We really guarded. We rebounded in the second half, and my stars were stars, all three of them. We rebounded and my three stars were stars. We're pretty good what that happens.

Go ball. Go ball. I'll worry about the coaching. You just get out there and ball.

When you're trying to build or change a culture, what do you do I always say you take players from state championship teams because they only know one thing, winning.

I have no idea. We just kept saying, 'Take it hard.' You know, the game ended up being played in a way that we couldn't get it changed, couldn't make the plays.

This is what Conference USA should be in every game and every building. This is a basketball environment.

Rodney scored a bunch of points, but let me tell you what Rodney did -- he defended. Late in the game, he did not get beat on the dribble one time.

We're deep and we're also fast. I want the game that way.

The thing I'm most pleased with was I thought you saw an intensity level and an effort level that we haven't had for a couple of weeks. Second of all, there were things we prepared to do, and we executed them. ... It was some good stuff.

I like it. It's stimulated by thinking. I thought it was the best way to utilize these players. So I changed. People thought I was crazy. 'You've won all these games doing it one way, all of a sudden you're changing everything.

Hopefully he'll respond to this and understand I'm trying to do whatever I can to make sure he understands there are boundaries,

You have to understand this young man will do anything I ask. This is a guy who shot it all the time in high school, and if I ask him to take four shots a game, he'll take four shots a game.

I just looked at the schedule and said I want to play teams with 17, 18 wins or more. I tried to do that last year, too. But I thought Austin Peay and East Tennessee State would be 18-win teams, and they didn't come close.

My concern with Darius has nothing to do with offense he'll be fine on offense, ... It has to do with whether he can guard the position. Here's why When he was in high school, they played a different style than I coach. It was, 'press all over and try to steal the ball.' You can't play in college or the NBA that way -- you have to guard somebody. Now that he's playing for me, it's going to be different.

I got a little frustrated at times because I thought there were chances for us to break open the game. I'll probably watch the tape and say it was as much Rice as it was our guys.

I think the university and I have gone out of our way to give Jeremy every chance to be a part of this program, but we can not allow his actions to continue to be an ongoing distraction for this team.

Now everybody understands the importance of Darius Washington with this team. It's his energy as much as anything else, his ability to get up and down the court and score baskets when we need some baskets to be scored.

We have guys who just haven't played together. We're just trying to figure it out. Offensively, we're taking so many bad shots right now it's almost making me want to vomit at times, but we are being aggressive.

The first half we missed 14 two-footers. At some point, we've got to make those shots. In the second half we made them, but you've got to make the ones that are near the basket. You can't miss them all.

We had to perform for two months. We had no room for error.

They're intelligent kids. They're doing well in school. They take care of business. ... Decision-making can be suspect at times based on their inexperience.

This is another great opportunity to showcase our program, our University and our city to the nation,

Our defense was phenomenal. Joey Dorsey was an absolute monster, and we need him to be a monster.

It's a good win against a team that was 9-1. If we don't beat somebody by 40, everybody is saying, 'What's going on with the Tigers' They have scholarships too. They came out and had a game plan on how they were going to play, but they turned it over 19 times.

People are saying, 'Well, do you think it'll hurt you that they're young You know, the thing about young guys is they don't think they're going to lose. They haven't been through it yet. So we will see.

When you beat a team on a 10-game win streak, that's a great win. We had chances to get it to 16, 18, 20 and we're just not capable of it yet.

People thought I was crazy. I've had more fun coaching this style.

A great defensive effort. I always go with the same thing We want to make the game hard for the other team, and we did today.

He stands for three things his family, his players and winning. I will miss playing him, but he will be coaching again.

The great news is that we have a lot of guys coming back and a lot of guys coming in. So for this program, yeah, you'd like to have some guys back. But it's about them at this point.

I thought Kareem was terrific. He's been working out at 630 in the morning. He's been working hard at practice. He has been humble about this whole situation.

Please make a basket. Make a free throw. Kick it in. We played bad and I coached bad. ... we did it together.