John Calipari: "Talking us out of the NCAA Tournament does not work"

Kentucky’s NCAA Tournament resume has been all over the place this season, the past month especially. After the loss at Georgia a week ago, we started to resign ourselves to a March without the Cats in the Big Dance. Then, they went to Starkville and beat Mississippi State, a crucial Quad 1 win. Today’s victory over Tennessee makes the Cats’ chances of making the tournament even rosier. Keep this up and you probably avoid the play-in game.

As you might expect, John Calipari was in a good mood after his team’s 66-54 win over the Volunteers. In both his postgame press conference and radio segments with Tom Leach, he said he told his team to tune out the noise, a message he’s been harping on all season.

“Talking us out of the NCAA Tournament does not work,” Calipari said. “You either play yourself in or you play. So people talking, ‘They’re done,’ and I just said, ‘Look, don’t listen to it.'”

“All I’m saying to them is, ‘Don’t listen to all the garbage. And if you hear it, turn it off, turn your computer off.’ And just have good thoughts about this team because this team is trying to fight. They’re great kids. And I’ve said all along we were going to break through.”

That said, Cal admitted Kentucky’s resume has some blemishes, namely the losses to South Carolina and Georgia.

“We’ve had two losses that you would like to have back,” he said. “But you know what? None of that matters now. Everything is us going forward. And so we have a tough game, we got road games, two tough road games. We got to tough home games. Play the games. Let’s see how we are let’s see if we get healthy. Let’s see if we get better.”

Tubby Smith’s message to the team

Kentucky celebrated the 1996, 1997, and 1998 teams at halftime of today’s game. Tubby Smith, who led the Comeback Cats to the title in 1998, arrived in Lexington yesterday and came to practice yesterday and shootaround today. During his time with Tom Leach, Calipari shared a little bit of what Tubby told the players.

“He spoke today to the team at the shootaround and his message was, the halftime score is irrelevant,” Calipari said. “And then we’re up 20. That’s not irrelevant. [Laughter]”

The other part of Tubby’s message does ring true today. He referenced the 1998 team’s struggles during the season and their ultimate run to the championship.

“It was what a great message he said to the team. ‘We lost three home games. They wanted me out, they wanted everybody out. And we lost to Mississippi at home. For the first time in 30 years, they beat us. You can’t talk a team out.”

“They came together. How many of you were around in ’98 watching that? And what they did is they just came together. They were losing. I can remember our 2014 team. We lost a ton of games, we lost games late. We missed shots, and then we got it together. I can’t tell you that’s happening with this team. When I can tell you we’re way better than we were.”

Tubby came to the locker room to congratulate the team after the game:

Brought the fight. #GoBigBlue pic.twitter.com/4zfJ9h2sN7

— Kentucky Men’s Basketball (@KentuckyMBB) February 18, 2023

Just keep winning.

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