John Calipari media day transcript

Q.  In most of the preseason rankings, Kentucky, MichiganState, Louisville in some order are the top three.  Does the team know?  Do they realize that, and are they excited about it?

COACH CALIPARI:  They might.  Again, this thing is a process of us learning each time out and self evaluating, where they know, okay, how do you learn?  Well, you learn against teams like that, and you want to win every game.  We play to win every game.  But the biggest point is you’ve got to learn from every game.

So those are great learning experiences.  Now, you hope you win and learn.  You hope you learn from someone else’s mistakes by watching and say, oh, we don’t want to do that.  The reality of it is it doesn’t always work out that way.

Q.  Coach, in 2012, a lot of people looked at that team, putting a young group of guys together and winning a National Title is kind of the exception.  I wonder what you say about that.  Is that the exception, or is that becoming the norm around Kentucky?

COACH CALIPARI:  I don’t know if that’s the exception.  We had a really    we had good players, but more importantly, we were the best team.  We were the most efficient team on offense.  We were the best defensive team in the country.  They played    they were a great team, and we had really good players, but we were a great team.

Will this team become that?  I don’t know.  We’ve had 10 practices.  Today will be our 11th practice.  Could we become that?  If we choose to.  But it’s    I just don’t know.  Is it the norm?  I wish the rules would change and kids stayed for two years, or we did more to encourage kids to stay for two years minimum, but that’s not the rule right now.  So you have to deal with it.

And this    I would not wish this on anybody every year, trying to coach a new team.

Q.  When you all won it two years ago, Louisville last year, does that kind of push the reset button on the rivalry, and what pressure does that add?

COACH CALIPARI:  I think both teams could have losing records, and in this state, it matters.  I’m not sure nationally it matters as much, but I know in this state it does.

I remember saying, what if we won every game and lost to Louisville my first year?  People around the state said, we’d be disappointed, bad year.  I mean, that’s just how they are.

So that game is going to be that game, and probably both programs look to have it done.  Play the game, who wins, who loses, move on now because it takes on a life of its own.

Q.  John, you had issues at point guard last year.  This year it looks like you’ll probably have a freshman at point, and yet the perception is you’ll be better.  How do you feel about that?

COACH CALIPARI:  I’ll also tell you Jarrod Polson is way better.  He’s    like right now, if you watched him practice, you would say he’s fine, and he’s confident.  He’s stronger.  He’s more skilled.  He knows how we’re playing.  He’s just not as big.

Those two guys are 6’5″, 220, and they’re bulldogs.  What I’m trying to do with both Andrew and Aaron (Harrison) are play faster, run faster, show your speed more.  You don’t have to    either throw a lob or shoot a layup or shoot a five footer.  So I’m trying to create habits that they don’t have right now.

They want to spin back.  They want to throw scoop passes and bounce through    you know, stuff that normal freshmen do.

But I will tell you, with their size and skill set, and they    right now you’ll notice I’m making Andrew keep his hair longer than Aaron’s so I know who’s who, but when the season goes, then we’ll have them so the other team doesn’t know who’s who, and we’ll have them cut it back down where no one will know.

There’s    I told Andrew he’s got to keep one line somewhere on his head that I can see, and then I’ll know it’s him and not Aaron.

Q.  If you have the locker room leadership that you want, does that solve your desire for sharing the basketball?

COACH CALIPARI:  My job is to teach all these kids what leadership is and what it means and how to lead.

In our mind, we’re trying to teach servant leadership.  That you’ve got to be more about your teammates than yourself to really lead.  I’m trying to teach the whole team that, not just one guy.  You want to lead, you have to serve.  You’re not leading to say, Go get me the water.  You’re leading to say, Does anybody need water?  Are we all right?

But that’s not in their initial nature, and that’s what my job is.  What I’m hoping is, when kids leave us, they understand and have the basics for leadership skills to take over if they had to.

So right now, Willie has been hurt, practiced yesterday for the first time.  Hard to lead, hard to make the club in the tub.  And you have Alex just started practicing with his hamstring.  So he’s practiced.  I think yesterday was his first full practice.  So those two are veterans.

But I’ll tell you, Jon and Jarrod are showing great leadership.  I love it.  Julius and Andrew and Aaron.  James is not.  He hasn’t    he doesn’t have that yet.  But he’s a great kid on the court, unselfish.  He’s starting to talk more.

Q.  You’re already one of two coaches to lead three different schools to No. 1 rankings.  When you hear that, what do you think?

COACH CALIPARI:  Well, we’ve had a bunch of teams be No. 1, and you’re right, three of them from different programs, and all of them were great defensive teams.  I don’t know exactly how many of my teams were No. 1 in the country.  Do you know?  Six.

If you look back at those six teams that all were No. 1 in the country at some point, they were all great defensive teams.  They were efficient offensively.  They rebound the ball.

Obviously    are you ready?  They were talented.  You win because you have good players.  If you don’t have good players, you’re not winning.  Don’t even want to talk to you.  You have good players.  That’s why you win.

But those players have got to come together, they’ve got to share, they’ve got to be good defensively, they’ve got to be efficient offensively, and my best teams have been that way.  We’re not near that yet, but the team has a chance.

Q.  Cal, has there been a moment in practice, or maybe more than one, where you saw somebody do something and say, ‘Hey, I didn’t know you could do that.’

COACH CALIPARI:  They are getting to the point    you know, we have the helmet award.  If you get dunked on, you’ve got to take the shot with the helmet on.  So Derek Willis dunked on both Julius and Dakari (Johnson), like both of them.  We just stopped practice like, oh, my gosh.

Derek Willis is going to be a really good player.  He’s learning.  He’s creating good habits.  It’s    you know, this team is going to be a hard team to steal minutes, but I’ll tell you what, he’s playing as well as anybody.

And the other guy is Marcus Lee, who’s just so active.  What he is is a young Dennis Rodman.  You’re like offensively, where do I put him?  Then you watch defensively, and he can guard every position.  He rebounds like crazy.  He’s tipping balls in offensively.  He’s got a clubliness about him.

I sent him home for the weekend, and on Sunday he texts me about noon, and he said, Coach, I cannot wait to practice.  How do you feel?  I mean, that’s who he is.  There was no like    that’s just who he is.

Q.  What have you seen from Dominique (Hawkins) early and how he might figure in?

COACH CALIPARI:  Dominique had his best practice yesterday.  You have to understand who he’s going against.  And the best thing that’s happened for him, he’s on the court with Jarrod Polson.  So I made it so he and Jon Hood and Jarrod Polson are on the team.  So he’s got two guys leading him.

Jarrod has been the point guard and he’s been the off guard, but when you play dribble drive, it really doesn’t matter.  There’s four perimeter positions.  So I told Jarrod, you’ve got to start letting him be the point.  Well, he’s not quite ready for that yet, but he does it some.

But yesterday’s practice, he made jump shots, he made runners, and you’re going against 7 foot now.  There’s always a 7 footer on the court, and there’s always another 6’10” guy out there, and the guards he’s going against are 6’5″.

Not afraid.  He’s physically going to not back down.  With the Wildcat code here, he and Julius are one or two.  Every two weeks, as we judge it, he and Julius are one and two, two and one.  So he does everything he’s supposed to.  He’s a great kid.

Q.  Best teams.  How often    what percentage of the time would you say the best team wins the whole thing?

COACH CALIPARI:  Well, you start knowing in the middle of January, late January, okay, we’ve got a chance, and then you start looking at what could hold us back.  2010, we knew it was shooting.  We knew.  We had a bad shooing night, we were going to lose.  You think of our team, that’s what worried us the most.

This team, I don’t know what that will be, but by the middle of January, late January, we’ll know, okay, that’s the Achilles heel.  What will they try to do?