John Calipari hammers himself over pre-game mistake vs. Tennessee

The Kentucky Wildcats were announced as a No. 2 seed in the 2022 NCAA Tournament Bracket during ESPN’s Bracketology show on Sunday night. During the show, ESPN’s college basketball personalities got to speak with Wildcats head coach John Calipari. He mentioned he was still really angry at himself for not having a shootaround before Kentucky’s recent SEC Tournament semifinal matchup with Tennessee. The Volunteers defeated the Wildcats 69-62 on Saturday night. The loss is still clearly weighing heavily on Calipari’s mind.

“I think the last game, I’m putting it on myself, no shootaround,” Calipari said. “The dumbest thing. I can’t believe I did it. And I didn’t go with my gut and we didn’t do it. But in that game when I watched it, alot of guys were doing stuff they hadn’t done in a while. And I’m just saying, the clutter, shut the phones off. Don’t listen to anybody. Let’s just be together. Let’s do this.”

John Calipari on the value of big men in the NCAA Tournament

John Calipari recognizes the differing values of big and guards when it comes to the NCAA Tournament. After his team fell to Tennessee in the SEC Tournament, the Kentucky head coach explained his thought-process.

“Yeah, but you better have a big too. Yeah, you have really good guards, but your big is not good enough, well, you ain’t advancing either,” stated Calipari. “You may go one or two rounds, but you’re not going to be that Elite 8, Sweet 16 team. We have both. We have four point guards. Three of them play together at times, most times. We have three, four different guys that could play at four, so if one doesn’t play well, I can go to another one and another one. Yesterday it was Jacob. Today it was Keion. We still had Davion, and I can also play Lance.

“Lance played — again, you’re not saying that Oscar only played eight minutes in the first half. No one is saying anything, but that’s a fact. He played eight minutes, and the reason was I wanted to give us a chance to win, which I did by not playing him and giving him a third foul, so we had our chance. Best player in the country, and he fouls.”

As the past indicates, John Calipari knows what it takes to find victories in the NCAA Tournament. As his Wildcats rebound from a SEC Tournament loss, Kentucky will be one of the most feared teams in the NCAA Tournament.

On3’s Stephen Samra also contributed to this article.