John Calipari on Ashton Hagans: "He's going to be fine"

John Calipari isn’t worried about Ashton Hagans’ slump. When Tom Leach asked about Hagans’ turnovers on last night’s call-in show — he’s had 18 in the last five games — Calipari said he’s going to talk with Hagans about limiting his errors without losing his edge.

“He’s going to be fine and we’re going to sit down and really do some tape study and get him in a – I need him to be aggressive, to be honest. I want him to run and fly up the court and create shots for his teammates but he’s had – like two of the plays were charges. You kind of want to take those out of the equation. Know what I’m saying? When they’re charges, that’s not in my mind like a turnover. Sometimes those charges are flops, wouldn’t you say, Tom? They just run in there and flop it. Well, that’s not a real turnover, so let’s not count those. But, the ones where you have a guy wide open in the corner and you try to throw something crosscourt or a lob, those are the ones we’ve got to eliminate.”

Earlier today, Hagans was named one of ten semifinalists for the Naismith Defensive Player of the Year award, which is just one reason why Calipari is letting him play through these bumps.

“Again, let me tell you with Ashton, there is no better defender that I know of. There is nobody that will come up with a rebound to win a game like him. He’s improved his shooting immensely. He can create shots for his teammates. He makes the game easier for them. His turnovers are a little high the last five games. We’ve got to get them back where they were. But that’s okay. We can do that. That’s not like saying we’ve got to teach him to run faster, we’ve got to teach him to jump higher.”

As Hagans showed up with his ridiculous dunk vs. Texas A&M on Tuesday night, he can jump plenty high.

“Did you see him dunk that ball going down the middle?” Cal said. “Like, whoa, where did that come from? Then he told on himself. I said, ‘Why don’t you do that more?’”