John Calipari reveals team's reaction to tornado survivors being in attendance

The University of Kentucky made a nice gesture on Saturday, as it welcomed four survivors from the deadly tornadoes that ripped through the state back on Dec. 10 and 11 to its men’s basketball game against Florida at Rupp Arena. The four survivors who were in attendance to watch the Wildcats play were all from Mayfield – an area that was extremely affected by damage caused by the tornadoes.

During his postgame press conference following Kentucky’s 78-57 win over Florida, Wildcats’ head coach John Calipari took a second from talking about the game and instead discussed what it meant to his team that the four survivors were there on Saturday.

“How about today – and I didn’t know until this morning – that we were going to have four people from Mayfield come in,” Calipari said. “How about that? The team was like touched by it. Like, they remember. I said, ‘Where we we when it happened?’ ‘We were at Notre Dame, coach, and we all went to the Grotto praying.’ I said, ‘You prayed for four of these guys, and you know what? One of them was in the candle factory.'”

While Calipari made it clear that he and his team were happy to have the four survivors at Rupp Arena for their game, the coach also reminded fans to not forget about the people in western Kentucky as they continue to recover from the tornado damages.

“I come back to, ‘Please everyone, do not forget about west Kentucky,'” Calipari said. “We should be able to do this and do this rather quickly because we’re not talking 400,000 people affected. … It’s a small number. Talking when we were up there to different legislatures and the governor, I mean they’re on it. We’ve just gotta keep moving.”

John Calipari loves how his team responded to chippy play vs. Florida

Per usual in a Kentucky-Florida basketball game, both teams were overly physical, and a couple instances in particular were worthy of bench-clearing moments. Kentucky head coach John Calipari said postgame that he was proud of how his team responded to the physicality Florida brought while also playing a clean sheet.

Despite the physicality on both sides, Kentucky edged the Gators 78-57 in Lexington, much to Calipari’s liking.

“That’s not who we are. We’re worried about winning a game,” Calipari said.

On3’s Barkley Truax contributed to this report.