Calipari’s Press Conference Notes

 

Calipari on watching last year’s Transylvania game tape:

“The thing that hit me in the face is, ‘that team won the national title?’ Man, we must really roll out balls. That team that I saw right there won the national title? Anthony Davis was the No. 1 pick, Olympic gold medalist and getting 20 a game in the NBA. He couldn’t score on Transylvania, could not get it in the basket. … I mean it was — we won the national title, and that was our first or second outing, which was kind of crazy”

Calipari on setting up the Sandy Telethon: 

“We’re going to do it Wednesday. We’ll do it for an hour. The phone banks will be open for 24 hours. We’ve got some great ideas of things to either bid on or you give this amount of money, we have some different things. When we did it with Haiti, we had 70,000 calls came in. They couldn’t take them all; 2,000 got answered. We’re going to hope to have it so whoever calls in, that phone will be answered somewhere. We have matching funds. Right now — I don’t want to give you the total number – but it’s well into six figures that we have together.”

Calipari on the focus with the telethon and the opener against Maryland getting closer:

“If we’re able to do something and to raise a ton of money for these people and these victims, you have to do it. It’s not an option of, ‘Well, you’ve got a game Friday against Maryland and isn’t that a big …’ Yeah, it’s big. I know it is. But I think what we’re doing here is bigger. And what we’re doing is letting our players understand it’s bigger.”

Calipari on who he is hardest on in practice:

“I just really go after a guy to see how he responds. I asked them the other day, ‘Who have I been the toughest on? Raise your hand.’ And five of them raised their hand. So well, ‘No, I’m saying the absolute toughest.’ The five of them believe it’s them. See, they only see how you’re coaching them. They don’t see how you’re coaching anybody else. I’m not mean about it. I keep saying, ‘If you can’t take me — you know I care about you. You know there’s no question that I care about you. If you can’t take me, how in the world are you going to take the people we play?’ ”

Calipari on if he coaches point guards more:

“Yeah, it’s a hard position to play. Also, defense starts with that position because he’s guarding the ball most cases. Now, all the sudden you’re in the eye of the storm 70 percent of practice, so obviously you’re going to get coached more than the other guys.”