John Calipari, players say Kentucky is "locked in" heading into March

Kentucky’s 86-54 win over Auburn was the Cats’ best performance of the season, and comes at an ideal time. Selection Sunday is two weeks from tomorrow. Coming into today, the Cats were projected as an 8-seed in the NCAA Tournament. If they keep playing the way they did today, they could move up several seed lines, a crazy thought considering how bad things looked a few weeks ago.

After the win, John Calipari, Antonio Reeves, and Oscar Tshiebwe all said that the team is “locked in” heading into the final stretch of the season.

“At this time of the year, you’re only going to get 1% better in certain areas,” Calipari said in his press conference. “But confidence, individual confidence, can really grow. And that is, you do it in practice, you get in the game and you perform, you have a ball playing. But the biggest thing is, you got to trust that all your teammates are on the same page so that you can be a risk-taker, you can make some plays, you can be aggressive because your teammates are behind you.

“They also know and trust that whatever the game plan is, everybody’s locked in. Our shootarounds right now are 30 minutes. Thirty. These dudes are locked in. Bang! And then we go.”

Reeves: “We needed that game. We definitely did”

Reeves’ confidence is definitely on the rise. The senior had 21 points tonight, including four threes. He was 8-13 from the field, and in the second half, helped put the game well out of Auburn’s reach. Reeves has become “Threeves” before our eyes, but he’s attacking the basket now too, adding another dimension to his game.

“It was one of those games where everybody was locked in and everybody was focused on what we needed to do,” he told Goose Givens after the win. “You know, we needed that game. We definitely did as a collective whole. And everybody was just out there, just connected.”

“Yeah, we were [locked in]. Everybody, you could just tell. In the locker room, everybody was focused, everybody was turning up to the music that was playing. Everybody was just jumping up and down. The approach to this game was great. We need that every game. So, as a leader, as a senior, sure, I’m gonna hype the team up.”

Oscar Tshiebwe had another historic performance. The senior finished with 22 points and 17 rebounds, his 44th double-double at Kentucky, which moves him to third on the program’s all-time list. It remains to be seen whether this is Oscar’s final season at Kentucky — he could still return thanks to the NCAA’s COVID eligibility waiver — but he told reporters he’s happy that the group is finally hitting its stride heading into March.

“I feel like right now everyone is locked in,” Oscar said. “Right now everybody just wants to win, you can see right now, even the walk-ons, everybody just wants to win. You see our bench is hyped all the time, jumping up and down.

“Losing is too much. We don’t want to go through what we went through. We were just sitting in the locker room sad, going through practice sad, everybody is just sad. We were trying to figure it out and now we’ve found a way to win. We’re diving for balls. Like coach said, we need to refuse to lose. We just don’t want to lose anymore. I’m glad I outrebounded Chris [Livingston] today.”

If you didn’t know Oscar, that last line would be really confusing.

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Calipari says his team is becoming empowered

If you’ve followed Kentucky Basketball during the Calipari era, you know there’s almost always a moment close to March when the players take ownership of the squad. It’s a trait of Calipari’s best teams, and he’s starting to see it with this group.

“They’re getting there. We’re on that rise. And at this time of the year, you’re trying to have them empowered. They’re calling plays in huddles now. Cason [Wallace] is saying, ‘Why don’t we do this?’ Boom. The minute they say that to me, I go, ‘Let’s do it because it’s off my plate and now it’s on their plate to make it work.’ And I want that. And defensively, the same. We talked about changing and they went, ‘No, let us keep playing this way.’ Fine, let’s go.

“So you want them empowered, you want them confident, but just as important you want them to have a ball playing. Even when it gets rough and the other team makes a run, you’ve got to have a ball playing basketball, especially this time of the year because you don’t want it to end. ‘Refuse to lose’ doesn’t mean you’re winning every game. It means your mentality of how you’re playing. You never stop. The clock may run out on you, but you just keep coming. And these guys are embodying that right now.”

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