John Calipari on how Kentucky will prepare for the SEC Tournament

With the regular season now over, the real fun begins. Kentucky’s 71-63 win over Florida closed the book on a 25-6 campaign and a 14-4 run in the SEC. The Cats are tied for second in the league standings with Tennessee, but due to tiebreakers, will be the No. 3 seed in the SEC Tournament. After the game, John Calipari shared how his team will use the coming days to prepare for the postseason. They leave for Tampa on Wednesday.

“We’ll get home probably by 7 p.m., maybe earlier. They’ll have the rest of today off. They’ll have all of Sunday off and I’m going to give them Monday off. If they want to come in and shoot and do something on Monday, fine. If they don’t, they don’t have to. We’ll start Tuesday, Wednesday and then we travel on Wednesday. So we’ll get down to Florida on Wednesday and Thursday is practice and we’ll get ready for a game who we don’t even know who it is and we won’t know until Thursday. So what we’ll do for two days is continue to work on us.”

Making sure Ware, Collins, and Hopkins are ready

Calipari’s mantra in March is typically “Fresh legs, fresh minds.” In order to make sure reserves like Lance Ware, Bryce Hopkins, and Daimion Collins are ready when their numbers are called in the tournament, recent practices have been more physical than usual.

“I went to live practices. We went body-to-body and we did scrimmaging. I normally don’t do that late but this team needed it. And we did loose ball drills, charge drills. I did stuff, block out drills. It’s very dangerous to do that but we needed it.”

Daimion Collins was out of today’s game due to a shoulder injury. Calipari did not provide an update on Collins after the game but after the Ole Miss win on Tuesday, said there will be a game when the Cats need him down the stretch. Same thing for Ware and Hopkins.

“We’ve got four point guards. You’ve got Sahvir [Wheeler], TyTy [Washington], Davion [Mintz], and Kellan [Grady]. You’ve got four point guards, and many times, three of them on the court at the same time. And then you’ve got the beast in the middle [Oscar Tshiebwe]. You’ve got the long athletic kids. You’ve got Lance, who’s a beast and will battle and you’ve got Daimion, when he’s ready and healthy and we’ve all seen Bryce do his thing. We’ve got a full roster.

“The hardest thing is the guys that aren’t knowing how much they’re going to play to be prepared to go in and make their name go down in the history of Kentucky Basketball of helping us do something. And they say, he didn’t play, but all of a sudden in this game and this game he was out of his mind and he helped us advance. You just want them to think that way. It’s hard though. You don’t play a lot. You’re sad. You’ve got to go to the next.”

SEC Tournament: all about the seed

If you’ve heard him say it once, you’ve heard him say it a million times: John Calipari does not care about the SEC Tournament. Calipari said it again today, telling his players to view their time in Tampa as an opportunity to improve their NCAA Tournament seed.

“This game for us was about seeding. I told them. It’s not about winning and losing. It’s about a seed. And the best position you can put them in is the higher chance of advancing, so win as many as you can. But I’m not worried about our conference tournament. I know how hard it’s going to be. This stuff is about March for us and me and it’s always been that way.”