Leftovers from John Calipari and Tyler Ulis’ pre-Florida pressers

“The tweak” was the main takeaway from John Calipari’s press conference today, but there were some other newsy bits worth sharing from Calipari and his floor general, Tyler Ulis. Let’s go over it.

Derek is officially out tomorrow

We thought as much, but Calipari confirmed that Derek will be out tomorrow vs. Florida, although they hope to have him back Saturday vs. LSU.

“He won’t be Tuesday. Let’s hope that he can play Saturday, but he’s not playing Tuesday,” Calipari said, adding that no, the tweak has nothing to do with Derek. “What I’m doing is something that’s going to help us whether Derek’s there or not.”

Playing Tai Wynyard is no longer an option

It amazes me that this late in the season, I still see tweets from fans asking when Tai Wynyard will play. I don’t think we needed Calipari to confirm that Wynyard won’t play the rest of the year, but he did anyways this afternoon.

“Not at this point,” Cal said when asked if playing Wynyard was still an option. “I would say no. No.”

Tyler Ulis felt responsible for the Vandy loss, but has moved on

Kentucky had a lot of issues on Saturday, but Tyler Ulis told reporters he felt partly responsible because of his poor shooting.

“Yeah, it was pretty hard on me because of the way I played, but I’m over it now,” Ulis said of the loss. “My legs were good. I just had an off-shooting night. I wish I would have shot the ball better, maybe it would have been a different type of game. But it happens.”

Ulis is trying to “pump [the bigs] up to fight”

Since Saturday, Calipari says he’s trying to build his big men’s confidence, and Tyler says he’s trying to as well.

“Just try to pump them up to fight and just play hard,” Tyler said of his message to the bigs. “Everything is not going to go right all the time with the fouls. They got a couple of fouls early in the game and they had to sit. But offensively we need them to insert themselves and rebound for us. But I feel like they’re going to do their jobs. Once everybody does it, we’re going to be pretty good.”

He wants Briscoe to take open shots

Admit it: you cringe when Isaiah Briscoe shoots jumpers. It’s okay, I do too; however, Tyler Ulis said they’re still pushing Briscoe to take open shots because they have faith that, at some point, they’ll start to fall.

“I want him to shoot it. I tell him, ‘You catch it, shoot the ball.’ He’s here for a reason. He used to score the ball a lot in high school, so he can make those shots, he just has to think he can make it. He keeps shooting they’re going to fall.”