John Calipari Game Quotations

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.

I didn't like the start of the game. The first two shots were not how you start a game. What I liked was as the game got going we had a big lead, we never got out of whack. We kept running our offense.

I think what we are going to do is go great ball pressure and deny wings to start the game because I want to know who is not ready to play. We had guys start this game like we don't have to play. Like they were going through the motions.

Our half-court defense is still our staple. That's what we are. We want to make the game hard for the other team. It's hard to run plays when you can switch and do the things we do.

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

The thing I've tried to tell each of these players is be ready for your moment. What if I only play Andre Allen eight minutes this game because Darius is really playing well? What if this game is better-suited for Kareem Cooper than it is Joey Dorsey? What I'm trying to tell our players is that you have to live with that and march on to the next game, and that may be your game and your opportunity to be the star.

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.

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.

The biggest play for me was when Darius missed the 3, then dove for the ball. We're up (six) and that's the game right there.

It was a great defensive effort. This game, the rest of the games, we've just got to make the game hard for the other team. We did that today.

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.

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.

It's not one guy. We played bad, I coached bad, it's everybody. We're all thrown in on this one. We all missed, all turned it over, all didn't play up to snuff. I didn't get the game fast enough, so I didn't coach well enough.

There was no one that played well. In this kind of game, you must have two or three guys that really play well and that everyone talks about after the game. We didn't have anybody.

They (East Carolina) came out and played like it was the Final Four. They could have easily won this game and we are lucky to be leaving here with a win. If ECU plays like that every night out, they will give a lot of teams trouble and make some noise in the conference. I take my hat off to Ricky and the team. We played as well as we could play.

To have that kind of energy after that Texas game and to have one day in between shows that we bounce back quickly. We did what we were supposed to do. All I was concerned with was how we guarded, and I thought we were tremendous.

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.

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

I barely wanted to be here. ... We've got to be able to check a minute into the game who's into this energy. Who is into what we are doing.