John Calipari Played Quotations

Let me tell you, we played well. Don't think we didn't play well, we're not much better than they.

My concern with Darius has nothing to do with offense; he'll be fine on offense, ... It has to do with whether he can guard the position. Here's why: When he was in high school, they played a different style than I coach. It was, 'press all over and try to steal the ball.' You can't play in college or the NBA that way -- you have to guard somebody. Now that he's playing for me, it's going to be different.

Obviously, Houston gave us a game. (The Cougars) could have, should have beaten us they played so well.

I thought our defense was good, and then I played the dreaded zone for a while which I think everybody's like 'Wow'. But we have a zone and we work on it. I just don't use it that much.

Please make a basket. Make a free throw. Kick it in. We played bad and I coached bad. ... we did it together.

That was a high-level basketball game. My hat is off to Tennessee . They played exactly like they needed to play. They are executing how they want to play. They got it inside when they needed to get a couple of baskets.

We have guys who just haven't played together. We're just trying to figure it out. Offensively, we're taking so many bad shots right now it's almost making me want to vomit at times, but we are being aggressive.

The Missouri Valley Conference bought games. And they all have winning records. Did I (say) that they all played tough teams? No. Look at their non-conference schedules.

They (East Carolina) came out and played like it was the Final Four. They could have easily won this game and we are lucky to be leaving here with a win. If ECU plays like that every night out, they will give a lot of teams trouble and make some noise in the conference. I take my hat off to Ricky and the team. We played as well as we could play.

There was no one that played well. In this kind of game, you must have two or three guys that really play well and that everyone talks about after the game. We didn't have anybody.

It's not one guy. We played bad, I coached bad, it's everybody. We're all thrown in on this one. We all missed, all turned it over, all didn't play up to snuff. I didn't get the game fast enough, so I didn't coach well enough.

For a while there in the second half, we played not to lose instead of playing to win. We had a chance to lose the game, but we won it, and we will move on.

That's quite a somber locker room in there. They had visions of winning this whole thing. It's not one guy. We played bad, I coached bad, it's everybody.

I have no idea. We just kept saying, 'Take it hard.' You know, the game ended up being played in a way that we couldn't get it changed, couldn't make the plays.

I really like the balance we had today. We played nine guys for a lot of minutes and they all performed. There is a star born in every one of these games and today it was Andre Allen.

All of a sudden our schedule stinks, even though we've played these other tough games.