Behind the scenes of an all-time John Calipari press conference at Auburn

The Neville Arena press room was packed in like sardines, standing room only to recreate the at-capacity crowd that left searching for answers just minutes before. John Calipari rushed in, taken aback by the not-so-friendly media faces in the audience. His internal switch flipped, a big ****-eating grin impulsively taking over.

“You guys were hoping to see something different,” he said. “We have some people here that are there for a reason! ‘We’re gonna make this out to be’ — please just leave my players. Let them be young and learn. Keep attacking me. I may be the worst in the country. Just attack me and leave these kids alone, OK? Thank you.

“And, yes?”

It went over the local media members’ heads, Auburn folks wondering why unhinged Calipari had come out in full force following a statement win. They weren’t the target recipients of the message. Those who were heard it loud and clear.

A shot to those who wrote this team off and said the Cats were dead in the water heading to their funeral on the Plains. Those who bought Calipari’s cemetery plot and picked out his casket, waiting to bury him and his time as the head coach at Kentucky. National columns prewritten and ready for publication, just missing a few sappy quotes to plug in to really drive the point home. Conversations on his replacement and who would be the best fit to take over the throne in Lexington and return this historic program to blue-blood status.

All they needed was a dagger loss, the final nail in the coffin. It just didn’t come.

“Now, the question will be — and everybody will anonymously talk about our defense. But the defense, they know they’ve got to get better. They know. They know we’ve got to rebound balls in traffic, we’ve got to do stuff,” Calipari continued. “I don’t know — I know there are people that would say stuff to try to hurt this thing. The reality of it is, what did you see today? What could you write? ‘They are so bad defensively.’ That’s a top-10 offensive team. And it’s a top-10 defensive team. … Held a top-10 team to 30 percent and 18? I don’t know, guess we could do better.”

We even got a told-you-so for zone truthers, a single jab for those who swore he wouldn’t dare ever throw one out there. He did it on one possession just for the sake of doing it.

“Did you see I went zone one possession? Just to do it?” he added. “I said, ‘How about we go zone one time. Let’s just try it.’ ‘We got nine stops in a row, Coach?’ I said, ‘Stop, let’s just try it. You guys want to try it? ‘Yeah.’ ‘Go zone.’ The reason it works? We don’t know what we’re doing, so how the hell can you prepare for something that we don’t even know where we’re going to go.”

When asked about Antonio Reeves’ growth since he first got to Lexington, Calipari used it to hit on the next shot as he checked them off his mental docket. Remember the people who said he cared more about getting his kids to the pros and their NBA success than winning games in Lexington? You’re catching the next stray.

“He’s made himself a pro. He’s going to have an opportunity like the seven guys that I’m going to go watch tomorrow,” Calipari said of Reeves — and Kentucky breaking its own record for most participants in the NBA All-Star Game. “I am flying to Indianapolis, hopefully get together with the families and then go enjoy seven guys in the All-Star Game. ‘He doesn’t care about basketball, why did he go up there.’ Are you crazy? Do you understand it’s a record? The most ever from one school in an All-Star Game was four — that’s by us. It was four. We’ve got seven without Jamal (Murray), without De’Aaron Fox. All of a sudden, you’re talking about, let’s get half the guys in that game.”

And then one final parting gift for those who quit on this team and its ability to turn things around.

“They learned to fight. Every game we play is either GameDay — never at home — but it’s GameDay on the road,” he said. “Look at this crowd! Look at all of these people in here!

“I’m going to go because I need to get to Indianapolis tomorrow.”

When you end the longest home winning streak in the SEC in dominant fashion and coach your team to its most complete performance of the season, you earn the right to silence some of the loudest voices afterward.