John Calipari postgame press conference following road win over Mississippi State

The rebounding, especially with guys, heard guys playing her, is that the grit you've been talking about? Yeah, we talked about it. Look, Mississippi State, what they've done in this winning streak, and what they've done to good teams, they have absolutely dominated. Offensive rebounds, out hustle, being tougher, turning people over. We had one guy go one for 13 and we won the game. He went one for 13. I thought it was one for 11 and the coaches, no, he was one for 13. But he had 11 assists and he defended in the biggest rebounds Kacen came up with.

Oscar is beginning to be himself, not quite there yet. But Chris, and I got to give Tyler credit because he said, look, they got a small man on Chris, post him up. And then you saw what we did. We went four or five straight times to post him up. And it's stuff that we have. So it's not like I had to do something new. We just said, just we're going to get him the ball on these cuts.

You guys talk all week about the nothing to lose mentality. How much did that help you guys tonight, especially in that 18-2 run? Well, the biggest thing I've been talking to him about is refused to lose. Just refused to lose. And you may run out of time, but refused to lose. You just keep fighting. Like today, we missed that one free throw. And then we miss a three and another three.

And they're making, and again, I'm not saying anything, but whatever we do to teams, they shoot like 90% from the free throw line. Everybody. It doesn't matter if you shoot 50, you go against us, you shoot 90. And but we made the plays down the end. We fouled the play at halftime made me mad because we were going to let him catch it. My man, again, I hadn't played to do that much. He tried to go get it.

And that kid, when he makes the three. So, but it was, you know, it was a hard fought game for both teams. Galloway, you talked about a refuse to lose mentality. What do you ask about that energy on the bench that looked like guys were jumping up and down all around the game from the opening tip? Talk about that energy on the bench. Well, last week, one of the guys said to me, your bench was not into it. And I went on the bus and I just said, guys, this is what somebody in the media says to me. I'm not looking at the bench.

I didn't look at the bench today. But I told guys, if you're not going to be into it, don't sit on the bench, sit in the seats. If you're hurt, sit in the seats. If you're not playing or you're not going to play and you don't want to get into the game, I'm okay just sitting, you know, sitting up our deck. You're not sitting on the bench. And, you know, look, we got everything out ahead of us. And I'll say it again, there are a lot of teams.

There are a lot of things that are rooting against us because people don't want to play us in that tournament. I got a good team. I'm just trying to convince them of that. We got to get healthy without CJ and Sevier. We're, you know, we're on fumes a little bit at the end of a game because I'm playing guys too many minutes. But I called a timeout at one point with what, 1208? You understand, I did that to get the, we just had to get a break for Kason or I had to take him out and I didn't want to take him out. But we ended up still going home with the timeout.

I always like to go home with one or two in case we need it or three. But was that cramps when Kason came out early in the second half? Was I don't know. I didn't ask him. It was injury or fatigue. Yeah, I'm asking. Did he call himself out? Yeah, it was like that. I said, come on.

Do you have any idea when Sevier or CJ either won them or he won? I hope Saturday. I haven't practiced so and we're not, you know, we won't go live practice tomorrow and then Friday we'll, you know, but we'll have to see. And we make no excuses. I mean, we, no one's reporting. So we might as well not talk about it that we're playing injured and we've had guys out. One game in the league, we had two starters, Kason and Jake about. Well, Kason played like seven, eight minutes, but he was hurt the whole time.

But then I didn't play him anymore. So we, there are no excuses at this time. How many games we have left? Five games. That's what we got. We got five to go. Who's ready to play? Who's ready to fight? Refuse to lose. Do what you got to do for the team.

I had to take one guy out because he was, I said, you're playing for yourself. When we're doing a scheme defensively and you choose just to guard your man, you can't be in the game. And then he went back and played well. Yeah. Chris, Chris was an all-star today. He's really proud of him. And I had to take him out at half because he turned one over, almost turned another one over with a minute to go.

And I took him out and I said, guys, you're fine, but what am I going to let you turn another one over? Just settle down at half time and come out and play. And he did. Cal, so many of the loss of us here at Freezer shooting is an issue. But you know, down the stretch, especially the last seven seconds, you got to go five to six to nine. What does that kind of play to the? It's how you win games. But what did they shoot today? 90? What was it? I actually shot 73. 73? I shot 75.

I shot 73. I've had some of the worst free throw shooting teams ever, but they made shots with the last four or five minutes. So we shoot 80% in that time. Hopefully that's what this team is. Kason knocked his down. Oscar went three out of four. Chris made his.

So it was a good win. Chris was six to six. Yeah. Anything else before I go? The rookie is going back to your UMass days. How much how much? I told him the story. Up in the last 14 years. I haven't at all.

But I told them when I was at UMass, Harper Williams got hurt. He was our one of our stars. He was our big guy. He got hurt. Now we got no big guys or we got backup big guys. And we had to go to Rutgers to play Rutgers at the end that building. Anybody will tell you it's just a hard place.

Tony Barbie shifted over, played some five. Went happy, but he scored. He did it. We ended up playing and beating them and winning eight in a row. And I said, the whole thing was fight. There are no excuses. Fight.

And refusing to lose doesn't mean you win every time. It means you may wear it out of time, but you're not stopping. You're you refuse to give up. I'll have to tell you, Mississippi State refused to lose today. You think of it, we had they tried to extend the game and I had to file because I was scared to death. They're going to make it three and they're not a great three-point shooting team. Someone would bank one against us.

How the stuff goes, but we got a trip back. Go ahead. Last one. Coach, you know, games here before, what did you think of? What did you say? Say, coach games here before, I guess, what have you thought of the environment today? Kind of a crazy stuff. It's always, it's always crazy here. You remember this one? I mean, it's been nuts every time we play here. And to get out with the wind against the team that's on fire right now was a big deal for us.

Thanks guys. Thanks, ladies.

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