Everything John Calipari said after UK basketball produced a statement win at Auburn

The Kentucky basketball team has another statement win to add to its NCAA Tournament résumé.

The No. 22-ranked Wildcats went to No. 13 Auburn on Saturday night and emerged with a gritty 70-59 victory at Neville Arena, one of the toughest road environments in all of college basketball.

UK never trailed in Saturday’s contest, which featured another standout scoring night from fifth-year guard Antonio Reeves and a quality defensive outing from sophomore big man Ugonna Onyenso.

Reeves led all players in the game with 22 points, marking the 13th time this season that Reeves has scored 20-plus points in a game.

Onyenso logged a career-high 36 minutes on the floor — the most of any player — and led Kentucky with 11 rebounds. Onyenso also had two blocks in his first game since matching the Rupp Arena record for blocks in a game earlier this week.

Auburn, which entered Saturday’s game with a top-10 ranked offense, had a putrid night trying to score the ball: The Tigers shot 30.9% from the field (UK’s best defensive shooting percentage of the season), 18.2% from 3-point range and missed nine free throws.

Kentucky also won the rebounding battle, 39-36, over Auburn. UK is a perfect 12-0 this season when out-rebounding its opponent.

All of this contributed to Kentucky’s first win at Auburn since January 2019. Saturday’s result also snapped a 16-game home winning streak for Auburn, which dated back to last season. In its most recent home game before Saturday, Auburn hung 101 points on a ranked South Carolina team.

Just a few hours prior to Saturday’s game, Auburn was included — and Kentucky wasn’t — in a reveal of the current top 16 overall seeds for the NCAA Tournament.

On top of all this, Kentucky went and won at Auburn while short-handed: Fifth-year forward Tre Mitchell didn’t play due to a left shoulder injury sustained in Tuesday’s win over Ole Miss.

Afterward, Kentucky head coach John Calipari met with media members at Neville Arena to recap the big Kentucky win, including the defensive strides the Cats have seemingly made.

Here’s everything Calipari said:

Question about Kentucky winning two straight games without some of the high-tempo, high-scoring play that was common earlier in the season.

Well, (Auburn) made a run and I wanted them to play defense, instead of letting them get out and go. So this will be game-to-game stuff. You feel the game.

What do you have to do to win the game? Who needs to be in? Some games it’s this guy, other games it’s another guy. The guy today, and who I keep coming back to, March, today was Antonio (Reeves). When one guy can go do what he did, in those games, it’s huge.

Well, we also have Rob (Dillingham), we have Reed (Sheppard), we have D.J. (Wagner). We have multiple guys that can go and do stuff like that. Now, the question will be... The defense, they know they’ve got to get better. They know.

They know we’ve got to rebound balls in traffic, we’ve got to do stuff. But, I know there are people that would say stuff to try to hurt this thing, but the reality of it is, what did you see today? Now, what could you write? They’re so bad defensively.

That’s a top-10 offensive team. And it’s a top-10 defensive team. The reason you don’t want to play wild, (is) they get steals and that’s what gives them gas. If you don’t turn it over, and we turned it over 12 times, and D.J. and Rob had four each. So that meant the other guys weren’t turning it over that much.

(We) held a top-10 team to 30% (shooting from the field) and 18% (shooting from 3), I don’t know. I guess we could do better.

Did you see I went zone on a possession? Just to do it. I said, ‘How about we go zone one time? Let’s just try it.’

‘We’ve got nine stops in a row coach.’ I said ‘Stop, let’s just try it. You guys want to try it? Yeah.’ Go zone.

The reason it works (is) we don’t know what we’re doing. So how the hell can you prepare for something that we don’t even know where we’re going to go?

Question about how hard Kentucky had to work offensively and the off-ball movement that made it possible.

They did. Adou (Thiero) made some unbelievable plays. Ugonna (Onyenso) was ridiculous again today. Reed was really steady, I would have loved for him to have made that 3 at the buzzer. That would have been like, ‘Oh my gosh.”

But it’s, you know, now we go on the road again. We’re pretty good. For some reason we’re better on the road than we are at home. I don’t have the answer. But we are, and it’s probably, maybe at home we’re expected to win every game because we’ve won 90-something percent of our home games.

So we’re expected (to win) and the crowds have been off the charts. So now you go on the road and you’ve got no chance of winning and now they play looser? Maybe? I don’t know. But we seem to be better on the road than we are at home.

Question about how Ugonna Onyenso’s role as a shot blocker changes the Kentucky defense.

Right. But, you’ve got Adou in there doing the same kind of stuff and what we’re trying to do is, ‘How do we make sure (Onyenso is) around that basket?’

Well the guy he’s guarding, most of the time he’ll drift that way even if he starts out. So, I was a little worried that they would spread out and keep them out. But they didn’t, so he was able to get near the basket and one they called a foul that was an unbelievable block.

I don’t know how many blocks he had today (two)... 11 rebounds, seven points, two blocks, one assist. Not bad.

Question about if Kentucky changed its ball screen coverage or if UK players just started playing it better.

It’s been the same.

Question about Antonio Reeves becoming a complete basketball player at Kentucky.

And not only that, he’s a three-level scorer. He’s got the layup, he’s got that floater mid game and he’s got the 3. The biggest thing he’s doing is he’s defending and he’s coming up with rebounds. How many did he have today? (Five).

I mean, come on. Five rebounds. And he’s a knockdown shooter and makes free throws. He’s made himself a pro... He’s going to have an opportunity like the (current NBA all-stars from Kentucky), I am flying to Indianapolis, hopefully get together with the family, and then go enjoy seven guys in the All-Star Game....

Do you understand it’s a record? Julius (Randle) is getting his shoulder worked on so he’s not going to be there, but the most ever from one school in an all-star game was four. That was by us, but, it was four. So we got seven (this year) without Jamal (Murray) without De’Aaron Fox. So all of a sudden you’re talking about let’s get half the guys in that game.

They learned to fight. Every game we play is either “Gameday,” never at home, but it’s “Gameday” on the road. And look at this crowd. I can’t believe all these people in here.

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