John Calipari: It's time to look at personnel

Kentucky basketball is in free fall, having dropped its last two, including Wednesday night’s blowout loss on the road against a rising Missouri program. After the game, John Calipari grasped for straws trying to figure out what’s wrong with his team, going from free throw shooting to Oscar Tshiebwe to try and guess what the root problem for this year’s group seems to be.

So take a look at everything Coach Cal had to say after yet another demoralizing loss for the Kentucky Men’s Basketball program. Getting towards the Nowhere To Go But Up mentality here with so many UK losses lately. But here is Calipari on his attempts to actually get the team trending up:

John Calipari on Kentucky’s loss at Missouri:

“I got to go back and really figure it out. Some of it is personnel,” Cal admitted blankly during his postgame presser. I think we got good players, but some guys aren’t playing great. I mean, CJ being out hurt us. But it gave Adou a chance. And he did pretty good. But look, you got to give them credit. That was what they did to us, you know. I look and some of the stuff wasn’t bad. But 14 turnovers, and some of them, all of them, made at critical times. But they’re good when they shoot the ball the way they shot it. And again, we missed free throws. I’m trying everything. You know, shoot 100 of them, we’re shooting one-on-ones, if you miss we run. I’m trying to do a lot of stuff, but I don’t want to make it that big an issue. But it is when you get the game. If we had made some free throws now it may be four or five and it’s a little different feel to it. But I give them credit, they deserved to win the game.”

Cal also noted that getting the ball to the reigning Wooden Award winner was difficult for the ‘Cats.

“You have Oscar, so you got to play a little different. The issue becomes…if they don’t play a couple of the guys on the floor, now Oscar’s got three guys around him. That’s an issue for us. So we’ve got to figure out some of it. I told them at halftime: Come down and throw him the ball. Then what happens, he’s open, it’s a dog fight in there, so if you try to pass it to him that guy’s fighting to get around and he’s fighting to keep him behind. There were opportunities to throw it in and do that. But again, we had like five wide open shots and didn’t make them. That takes the wind out of yourselves.”

All this said, and John Calipari still has plenty of faith in these guys.

“Look, I haven’t lost any faith. I’ve been through tough stuff, and I knew this would be a hard game. But I thought we would play better. I knew they would play better because they just beat Illinois and they’re making shots and they’re being aggressive and doing some good stuff. They did a good job. In the end, they had to grind it out, like my teams do. I mean, you get that lead and now we’re going to grind it, we’re going to shoot late in the clock, get a back door, make a tough three. They were good today. I give all the credit to Missouri.”