WATCH: Mark Pope, John Calipari after Kentucky's loss to Arkansas

It was a full house in the media room at Rupp Arena following Kentucky’s 89-79 loss to Arkansas. Adou Thiero and DJ Wagner met with reporters first, taking the podium to discuss the Razorbacks’ stunning upset in their former stomping grounds. John Calipari went next, speaking for just over ten minutes. As he has been all week, he was gracious, insisting it was simply one team — his — desperately needing a win more than the other.

“We needed to win a game. It didn’t matter who it was against. I made it clear, it was a privilege and an honor to coach here. We had 15 unbelievable years and a great run.”

“What Kentucky is doing and how they’re doing it — Mark Pope is doing a great job. Not just a good job, a great job. And you know, we kind of got them today. Just move on. Next game This was one game, and if anyone takes it more than that, you’re crazy. It’s one game. And if I take it any different with my team, then I’m crazy. We just need to win, folks.”

Mark Pope started his press conference by giving Arkansas and Calipari plenty of credit. He said his team is still struggling to figure out how to play without Lamont Butler — whom, it sounds like Kentucky could be without for a while. Pope was especially disappointed in the number of turnovers (14) and his team’s start to the second half. The Cats will have to regroup fast, with a trip to No. 24 Ole Miss coming up on Tuesday.

“Listen, my guys were really hurting in the locker room; they know what this building means, they know what this jersey means,” Pope said. “We talked after the game just very briefly about this game and about our job, right, how it is very much, like we have to move to the next game, there can’t be carryover.”

“We are a really good team.  We are dealing with some roster changes right now that are complicated,” Pope continued. “This is a journey for us.  This is not a coronation, this is a journey.  And we’re going to earn our way through it and there’s going to be some pain on the way and certainly, for my guys tonight it was super painful.”

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Mark Pope

MARK POPE: Congrats to Arkansas. I thought they played great basketball tonight. Played really tough, really hard. Our guys are pretty disappointed. Complicated stretch for us but I thought for most of the night we showed a ton of fight and we have a good group.  I’ll take questions.  

Q Mark, 13 threes for them, both that uncharacteristic and also hit at a high rate which was uncharacteristic. Just what did you see there? And a lot of those were obviously open shots too?  

MARK POPE: I thought they shot them really well. I thought they did a nice job.  They posed a bunch of difficult problems for us and they did a good job getting downhill, getting open. They made ball screen coverage with pick and pop complicated sometimes. I thought Davis did a nice job being really aggressive in two man game coming off floppies and they really did a terrific job making shots tonight.  

Q Coach, you guys opened the game at an 18 to 12 run and made some subs and it didn’t seem to go right after that. How important is it to get back fully healthy and Andrew to be at full speed?  Do you wish you would have done the subs a little different tonight or is it the pace of the game and the flow of the game?  

MARK POPE: I thought Andrew made some steps forward tonight.  I was proud of him. It’s the first time he ever had any contact in the game where you could feel his presence a little bit. And yeah, trying to figure out this guard rotation right now.  Normally I’ve gone to sub one of these three guards out to start the rotation earlier.  There was a little bit of high intensity to this game but it was a little bit slower pace wise.  I thought we could withstand it. I probably needed to start that rotation a little bit earlier.  It did feel like we ended up with three tired guys all at the same time, that’s hard.  

Q Coach, I’m over here.  Can you talk about the environment and what the fan base was like coming into this game?  This was pretty big all around and do you just want to take a second to talk about the fans?  

MARK POPE: There’s just nowhere like it. There’s just nowhere like it. It never ceases to amaze me. It was unbelievable.  So much juice in the gym. It’s BBN and a place like no other.  

Q Mark, right here. It seemed like to open up the game, our game plan was to let Arkansas shoot some threes, nine of 18, but only shot seven attempts in the second half. Was there any point you consider going zone maybe to slow them down from driving?  

MARK POPE: You know, it’s a little complicated proposition.  It’s almost a full 0.15 points per possession better against zone this year than they are against man.  And then also with the feel they had making shots, that gets really complicated.  If I could have run it back, I think I would have taken a more aggressive posture probably and taken some more risk defensively and maybe even rather gone zone.  But that’s something that we are going to have to continually work on. We’re navigating some roster situations right now that had me feeling a little constricted and I probably need to be more bold regardless and take some more shots and be aggressive. If I could run it back I would probably take some more risks there.  Even more than a zone.  

Q Mark, over here.  If I’m reaching, just shoot me down.  All the attention on Cal coming back, that’s all you were asked about and that’s all people wrote about and talked about.  Was there any concern at all with your guys forgetting that there was an actual game being played, to focus that way?  

MARK POPE: I don’t think so.  This is every game, right?  That’s the beauty of Kentucky, right?  It’s every night is the biggest game ever.  If we go on the road, it’s the biggest game ever and we are really blessed to have the greatest fan base in the world and so every night here is the biggest game ever. I think our guys are pretty used to that.  

Q Mark, back here.  Turnovers have been a bit of a problem off and on.  Do you think it’s more of what teams are doing to you or what your team is not doing?  

MARK POPE: I think it’s us. I’m trying to figure out how to navigate. We have a bunch of guys that are stretching right now to figure out how to play out of position and to make it work.  Credit to our guys, man, they are really stretching.  And we will get better at it.  It’s almost like we started a new season.  We are two games into a new season a little bit for our team and we are going to learn some new ways to attack this and we will get better at it.  And I can help us get better at it.  The turnovers were a little bit of an issue.  Not just the 14 turnovers but the turnovers that led to fast break points were problematic for us tonight.  We’re navigating the space, is not unique to us, it’s everybody.  We are navigating this space trying to keep it super super simple so that we can stay aggressive with guys playing new roles.  Where we can also be aggressive and adjust. Those two things sometimes fight against each other and I didn’t do the best job finding answers for that tonight and that’s going to be an ongoing process.  Like I said 100 times, our guys are great at learning and we will continue to learn and we’ll figure this part out too.  

Q Coach, this is probably Johnell Davis’s best game from Arkansas this year.  What did you see from him and did it surprise you all and did he do anything different than what you saw on film?  

MARK POPE: No. This was his best game for sure but I think he’s grown into it. He’s getting a chance now to be the ball dominant guy that he’s used to being.  He’s three games in, right? To being able to be a ball dominant guy.  I expect him to be more and more dangerous as the season goes on.  I think that as he fills in the space.  He’s a terrific player.  

Q Mark, back in the center.  Why didn’t Trent Noah play tonight? Anything, Mark? 

MARK POPE: Trent is actually super interesting to me.  With Drew coming back and Ansley playing so well.  I wonder if there is some space for Trent, actually at the three and I think that something to explore.  As we kind of reconfigure everything we are doing right now on the fly, he’s played well and there’s definitely space for him and it’s my job to find the right space.  

Q Mark, with the way the lineup has been the last couple of weeks. How difficult is it to find any level of consistency with this group because it seems like it’s almost changing game to game?  

MARK POPE: I don’t think that’s an anomaly.  I think everybody in the league is dealing with stuff like that.  And it’s a challenge for us, certainly, but it’s a challenge for everybody.  Like I said, that’s somewhere we will continue to make progress.  

Q Mark, here in the center.  One point game at halftime. Arkansas ended up scoring 12 of the first 14 points in the second half and particularly that run right before the under 16 timeout.  Obviously, that probably wasn’t the game plan you guys discussed at the half but what did you in terms of just them creating that separation created in the second half that they rode for the rest of the game?  

MARK POPE: I was disappointed, as I reflect back, we’ve been an unbelievable team coming out of halftime.  This was really our first poor run coming out of halftime.  Something we talked about as a staff after we met.  You always are evaluating energy, where energy sits.  We are kind of reflecting on what we did at halftime.  It might have had us come out, we came out not operating like we do after halftime.  And sometimes it’s just an anomaly, sometimes you just have a game like that. That is concerning to me because that’s been a staple with us, we come out at halftime and we’re great.  We were disappointing tonight and that’s a space where we’ve had great success and I think we’re pretty good about. I’m not sure the answer on that.  You know, I think you reflect about everything.  About the weight guys are carrying, about the energy and about the conversation, the adjustments at halftime, really truthfully it was maybe just poor adjustments on my part.  Sometimes you make an adjustment that looks great schematically but somehow it’s an energy stealer from your team and we will consider all of those things. That was really disappointing and was an important part of the game for sure.  

Q Mark, do you have a sense for Lamont’s status moving forward and is this going to be more of a long-term thing or short-term thing?  Do you know?

MARK POPE: I just don’t know.  I’m not sure. We are trying to just navigate the space.  There’s a lot to it because I’m not going to share because it’s his stuff.  We are trying to figure out how to proceed right now.  We will see, I would tell you more, but we just really genuinely don’t know yet.  We’ll figure out more in the next couple of weeks.  I would assume at some point we are going to take another shot at this and see how it goes and we will kind of play it by ear.  

Q Mark, you got a roster full of guys used to winning a lot of games. You are sitting at four and four. Any other year or any other league that might be seven and one. Do you have to talk to the guys about maybe four and four may be the new normal this year. I think you called it, predicted it was gonna be a bloodbath.  

MARK POPE: Yeah. One of the things that’s beautiful about this league guys, listen, my guys were hurting, my guys were really hurting in the locker room. They know what this building means, they know what this jersey means.  They see everything and hear everything and they know what matters.  They’re getting a up hand, up close look at how much it means to the people they are playing for.  I have a locker room that’s down tonight, not down, down is not the right word.  Like, hurt, as we have all season long.  We talked after the game just very briefly about this game and about our job, right, how it is very much, like we have to move to the next game, there can’t be carryover. This grieving process that we go through and for our guys they care so much, it really is a grieving process, a five-step process.  It has to happen fast, it has to happen in the next 12 hours or 16 hours and we will have some time to spend tomorrow where we can help each other do it because we’re going on the road to another top 25 team.  It’s the greatest thing in the world that that we get to do it, it’s the best thing in the world.  It’s super painful right now. We can’t indulge in this for very long.  It just makes it all complicated, you know, if there’s anything about tonight it was just kinda all kind of complicated, conflicting, upside down, twisted up feelings, with everybody in BBN.  Certainly our guys had that come out of this game and we have to race to clarity and race to the next one.  Because that’s what this league is for sure.  We are a really good team.  We are dealing with some roster changes right now that are complicated.  We are really good team.  We have guys that are really really competing.  We’ve got some guys that are growing and actually in the process, because they need to step up and be better for us and have guys in the process doing that and we are all doing it all while playing great teams and having two or three successes and having some setbacks and it’s awesome.  You know, this is a journey for us.  This is not a coronation, this is a journey.  And we’re going to earn our way through it and there’s going to be some pain on the way and certainly, for my guys tonight it was super painful.  Thanks guys.

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John Calipari, DJ Wagner, Adou Thiero

John Calipari

On what it’s like to win games in this building on the other sideline …

“Well, it’s hard to win in here. And I got to be honest with you, and Adou said he did the same thing. I looked up a couple times and I thought we were losing because I kept looking at Kentucky instead of Arkansas. And I told him, I did that and Adou said, ‘coach, I did the same thing.’ It was 15 years here, you know? I mean, the great thing for me was I was able to get around and see all my dear friends. Today I went and saw two guys that I knew weren’t going to be able to get out of the house, and one did. So, you know, coming back and playing this well, we played well. We did. It’s not, you know, made a lot of shots and, but we’ve lost a lot of games because we were 0-for, like guys, you gotta make some so it’s nice to know they can play this way. We had a great week of practice, and I told them, you’re primed for this. Now let’s go.”

On conversation Cal had with Adou, DJ, and Big Z prior to this game  …

“Well, I called them in together and I said, ‘Are you guys okay going back here, are you gonna be okay?’ And they all said, ‘we’re fine, coach, we’re worried about you.’ That’s the kind of team I have. That’s the kind of players they are. They were worried about me. I said, I’m fine. So no, they were good. They were good, and they played well today. They all three played well. DJ played, you know, and so did Z and so did Adou. Adou played as though that’s how we want him to play every game. Hard to play that way every game, but, you know, we put it in his hands and in spots where he could drive the ball, but we also ran. I mean, we had a bunch of points in transition. Nelly was playing like we’ve always expected him to play, and Kentucky is a really good team. I mean, we’re fortunate. I mean, we had to shoot 70%, 55, and 52 to win the game. If we don’t do that, we lose the game. They’re very, very good. They went to Tennessee with this same team and won, and then Tennessee comes back and beats Florida by 20. This league is crazy.”

On emotions of the game…

“We needed to win a game. It didn’t matter who it was against. I made it clear, it was a privilege and an honor to coach here. We had 15 unbelievable years and a great run. Support, the fans supported us, the families that trusted us with their sons. I got 190 texts by the time the game ended, I’m guessing a bunch of them are former players, not that they are ever going to cheer against Kentucky, they went to school here, but they also have a relationship with me. The only emotion I had was to win the game. I got mad with the technical by Billy, I got mad Jonos grabbed the guy and took him to the floor. Come on, you’re a vet, but you know I was into the game. I was going to play trying to drag us over the finish line.”

On Cal using the phrase “Kentucky is everyone’s Super Bowl” and if this was true tonight…

“Maybe, but you won’t believe this, Adou says we are still everyone’s Super Bowl when we play. We have teams making shots, blank shots, the ones where you think what in the world just happened. It’s not like we pointed to this game, we didn’t, we are just trying to win. Now we are going onto the next game. We have Sunday off, we are going home at 1:30 a.m. or 2:00 a.m. and practice Monday and Tuesday, then go to Texas. That’s easy, I mean this doesn’t end. And I have said it before that I didn’t look at any of the games today. I don’t know what happened other than the Tennessee game because the TV told me at our shoot around. You are going to lose three out of four or four of five, two or three in a row because of this league. And all we want to rack up is quad one wins, that’s the most important thing to do.”

#21, D.J. Wagner

On shooting well from three …

“It really wasn’t a big emphasis. Coach said just come here and play with confidence and have fun. Throughout the season, some games we struggled from the three-point line, but Coach always said in practice, just from how much work we put into practice, stuff like that. Shots are going to fall one game, shots going to fall some games, but we can’t really focus the game on that: missing or making shots. A big emphasis was really just defense, just fighting because that’s what makes us who we are, playing defense and fighting, and if shots fall, then it’s going to be good for us.”

On the emotions coming into the game …

“I felt a lot of emotions, that’s the thing, just walking back in the gym for the first time, being on the other side, on a different team, shooting around as a different team, so it kind of felt like a little weird. Once that was over, it was a little bit easier to lock in and stuff like that and just playing today. The atmosphere was just great. I feel like everybody loves to play in atmospheres like that, so it was fun for me, going out there and just seeing how crazy it was, how crazy everybody was going, it was fun.”

On how sweet the victory is for Calipari and former players …

“Knowing we came from here, we came from this school, it just felt good to be able to come back, see some familiar faces and stuff like that, just being able to get the win here.”

#3, Thiero, Adou

On the emotions of playing in Rupp …

“I kinda got my emotions out of the way, you know, last night when we came in. Just taking a look at everything and embracing everything, like a lot of memories were made here. Just coming into the game today, it’s another regular game. So, we have to go out there and play as hard as we can, and try and get the W, and we were able to do that today.”

On how sweet the victory was …

“You know, we had a decent bit of W’s here while we were here, so it feels good to walk out of here with another one.”

On the talk about Coach Cal coming back …

“It was mostly like we all were coming back, either we were already here, or was supposed to come here. We were like, you know, we gotta go out and play. Everybody else on the team, you know, they just had our backs. Went in there, played hard, and we knew how much this game meant to all of us.”