John Calipari reveals interesting tidbit about relationship with Rick Barnes

John Calipari has Kentucky at the forefront of the college basketball world once again. Under his guidance, the Wildcats have been on fire recently — blowing out Tennessee and taking care of business against Texas A&M in the last week.

While Calipari has a ton of respect for Tennessee coach Rick Barnes, the Wildcats welcomed the Volunteers to town with a convincing beating. The game was never close, as Kentucky defeated Tennessee by a score of 107-79.

After the game, a reporter revealed to Calipari that Tennessee has been successful against Kentucky recently. However, it was the Wildcats turn to find a victory over the Volunteers.

“They play well here,” Calipari said, speaking of Barnes and Tennessee. “I’m glad we won the game. Rick and I — I was calling him for advice a month ago. Getting a scout from him. He and I talk throughout the year, he’s a great coach. He’s got those kids playing. We were really good. I think he thought they weren’t as good as they should’ve been playing. I don’t know that, he’s the coach of his team.

“I told him — we don’t play much better than we just played.”

Calipari sent Barnes back home with a loss, and now Kentucky has their biggest game yet coming up. The Wildcats travel to Auburn Arena to face the No. 2 Tigers in one of the biggest SEC showdowns in recent memory.

Calipari jokes about opposing fans treating Kentucky different

After Kentucky defeated Texas A&M on Wednesday, Calipari joked that opposing fan bases seemed to treat games against the Wildcats differently. Kentucky beat the Aggies 64-58 in a tough road win, as their longtime coach appeared to be in a good mood following their tough game.

“One of the things I’ve done — I’ve invested in t-shirt companies because everywhere we go is a white-out, a blue-out, an orange-out… it doesn’t matter what it is,” said Calipari during a postgame interview on SEC Now.

“You have to give them credit,” continued Calipari of their tough win over Texas A&M. “They smothered Sahvir [Wheeler]. And I did a poor job — I wasn’t doing the right stuff until we said no more ball screens. They took us completely out of it. Second thing was, we needed to see TyTy [Washington] in a big pressure-packed game. He had two turnovers back-to-back, I had to take him out. And then I said ‘I wanna see who you are,’ and he makes big baskets. Jacob Toppin guarded four guys and really played well. Davion [Mintz] played really well.”

Kentucky is on fire, but John Calipari and the Wildcats better be ready to deal with t-shirts and more when they face Auburn on Saturday.