John Calipari talks cutting, small ball and Adou Thiero after UK’s final exhibition game

The next time that John Calipari’s Kentucky men’s basketball team takes the court, it will be for real.

After last week’s at-times sluggish win over Georgetown College, UK closed exhibition play with a 46-point win against Kentucky State Thursday night in Rupp Arena.

All five UK starters — Justin Edwards, Adou Thiero, Tre Mitchell, Antonio Reeves and D.J. Wagner — scored in double figures, led by Reeves with 20 points. Mitchell had a double-double with 15 points and 10 rebounds.

Once again, UK was short more than 20 feet of available players.

None of Kentucky’s injured trio of centers — Aaron Bradshaw, Zvonimir Ivisic and Ugonna Onyenso — suited up for the Cats in either of the two exhibition games.

While both Bradshaw and Onyenso were on hand at Rupp Arena (and did some light shooting during pregame), Ivisic wasn’t in the building.

Postgame, Calipari said in his press conference Ivisic has food poisoning, but that he did participate in UK’s pregame team shootaround earlier Thursday.

And on his postgame radio show, Calipari said he thinks Bradshaw will miss the first week or two of the season, with Onyenso lagging further behind in his recovery from offseason foot surgery.

Kentucky opens the 2023-24 regular season Monday night against New Mexico State.

Ahead of that curtain-raiser against the Aggies, here’s everything Calipari said after Thursday’s 99-53 win over Kentucky State:

Opening statement:

It was really a great experience (the Unity Series). PG Peeples was there. Coach Rav (George Raveling) gave an unbelievable talk. You know, I think, more than just the game, doing this to bring them to together with us, it was pretty good. I just — I was asking, Z was supposed to warm up with us, and he practiced with us yesterday, he had a great shootaround today, he ate, this kid’s got like buzzard’s luck, he got food poisoning. I said, “Where is he?” They said he got sick and the doctor told him to go back to the lodge. So...

But he is doing better. At practice it was nice, the people that were there watching us. It’s nice to have him back.

Today’s game, you know, you — as fast as we are playing, you know, to have 25 or whatever assists on 37 baskets and have only really four or five turnovers, probably less, it — you know, that means guys can handle it, guys can pass it, they can catch it. We have a bunch of pretty good basketball players. I just like the fact that they shared it. In this kind of game what happens is guys just lose their mind. They didn’t. They played the way we are trying to play. They know we have tough games coming up. New Mexico State, they are good. I mean, watching tape of them, too, oof, they took some of their kids from Sam Houston and they make shots.

So it is going to be a hard one there for us. But this was a good tune-up. They are off tomorrow, we practice Saturday, we do something on Sunday and get ready to play Monday. Questions.

Q. Cal, two exhibitions, Blue-White Game, about a month of practice. What is the number one thing this team needs to get better at that maybe you didn’t know at the beginning of all of that or maybe you saw throughout that?

The Georgetown game was a great thing for us to get bumped around and not block out, not go body to body. So that is all we have been doing, three or four things a day to go body to body. I thought they did good stuff today. Some of the guys’ motors are not where they need to be. So we will have to do some conditioning with a couple of these guys because they go three times up and down the floor and they can’t breathe. And we’re training, practicing, going two hours and 20 minutes with no subs.

So, I mean, there are a couple of guys — I can remember PJ Washington, we had to do extra training to get him to lose some weight. We have a couple of guys like that. I thought Tre (Mitchell) played with more of a motor today than he has played with. And our guard play, you know, last game I said you can’t end a game with one assist, D.J. (Wagner), you can’t do it, and so he has seven. We talked to him about cutting. He cuts. I mean, they listen.

Robert Dillingham’s playing. He missed every shot today but they were all good shots. And he made one or two plays that were ridiculously hard look easy. They were, like, really hard plays that he just made a play, like what did he just do? And he made it look easy. So Justin’s getting better; you know, still too hard on himself. I’ve had guys like that, Derrick Rose was that way, too hard on yourself, man, you’re playing good, started the game driving. First half I told him, we love lay ups, we like 3s. First half they gave us things at the basket. We scored 40 that way out of the 50.

Second half they packed it and we got 3s. Then you shoot 3s. Antonio (Reeves) made shots. It was good. It was good to see.

Q. Coach, you guys are obviously bigger, stronger, faster, and quicker. How much can you appreciate having that kind of advantage?

No, we — you know, a lot of games we’re playing we are trying to play against ourselves. So whether it was Kentucky State or whoever it is, we are playing against ourselves. How good can we play together. How random, like you saw today, can we play that way. How fast can we run up and down the court to put them on their heels. We did a lot of that today.

So like I told them at half time and I told them prior to the game and after, we were playing against ourselves, not out of disrespect for Kentucky State, that’s what you are supposed to do.

Q. I can imagine being forced to play small ball can be tough. But what pleased you the most about the rotation tonight?

Well, playing Justin at 4, you know, what the role I’m talking to Adou about is be a finisher. When that ball comes to you, whether a jump shot or a drive for a basket, I don’t need you to be a play starter. Now if you have it and you throw it, run into something where you end up being free for the play. That’s what he did today. I mean, I like it again where you have, you know, like six guys, six guys taking nine or more shots. I mean, every — they are sharing. It’s — you know, you are talking about every one of these guys were ‘the guy’ and they are sharing.

So Adou being that finisher for us, he’s good. And he made free-throws. He missed some, but he shot 70 percent from the line. Get fouled, get to the line. He’s strong. He’s — you know, he literally could be one of the best finishers in the country.

Q. Coach, what do you like best about having D.J. starting at point? I know it is position-less in a lot of ways. But what do you like best about him there as opposed to being off the ball?

Well, here’s how, he is off the ball. Hit somebody and cut like crazy and the ball finds you. It just does. I don’t know, you know, that’s like a karma of basketball. But he also — he talks like he is a senior. And I coached his dad. His dad did not talk. Like he just played and scored and, you know, he — but he wasn’t a talker. This guy runs us. He’s looking at players. He is moving them around.

I also like Rob off the ball. Because when there are not ten eyes looking at him, there’s four eyes or six, he’s getting something. He will get a basket. So those two. And I told Robert today, you know, should he be starting? Yeah, he could be. You know, Shai should have started, Devin should have started, I can go down the line of guys, Immanuel Quickley, you know, when — they had to work their way in. And I just told them, everybody that watches you play right now loves how you are playing. Because he’s not messing with the ball. He is just getting baskets. Again, how many assists did he have today? Six, six assists, no turns. And he missed every shot. Still played good.

I thought we took so many chances defensively trying to steal some, and I think most of those were in the second half. But...

Q. John, hey, I saw that, I guess, during the pregame radio show you mentioned Kentucky State, maybe you didn’t want them to do zone because you didn’t have time to focus on that with your team. How much of an emphasis is that for you this weekend as you head into Monday?

I don’t know because I haven’t watched that much tape and I will have to watch Sam Houston’s tape to see if he played zone. If you watched us in Toronto, we were a great zone offensive team because we put Tre in the middle and shooters around him. We even had high, low stuff. We’re fine.

Tomorrow was going to be our zone day, nothing but zone, both on defense and offense. And they reminded me they have an off day tomorrow. So it is going to have to be at some point on Saturday.

But Sunday’s got to be a normal day before the game practice. You can’t go 2, 3 hours. We will have a hard game.

Q. John, you talked about D.J., trying to get him to cut more. Justin Edwards said at Media Day that you are on him to cut more as well. Young guys like that, do they not know that? Did they not have to do that in high school? How much technique is there into just cutting?

What I would tell you is that every one of these kids always had the ball. So by always having the ball, they don’t cut.

In other words, they make a play and then they throw it to you and see what you are going to do. And that’s something that they — it is a habit that they do. Let me tell you what happened to start the game. I’ve been on Justin about offense rebounding. I don’t care where you are on the floor, go rebound because of what you can do.

And the second thing is, straight line drives, get to the rim. So to start the game he was 5-for-5, driving the ball. And, so, that’s why the game started the way it did. I told him, we are not going to start the game shooting all 3s. We’re not doing that.

And, you know, we only took eight 3s at half but it was because of the way the game was. And then in the second half you take, what, 17? That is what they gave us, so you kind of roll with it that way.

Q. You shot the ball well again tonight. I asked you this the other night but I didn’t really understand your answer, so I was hoping you could expound. Who are the guys on the team, can you name the ones who had the green light to shoot?

D.J., Rob, I’ll be honest with you, Reed, Antonio, Tre if he is open. And, basically, even like Adou I thought passed up a couple of jumpers to get to the rim. And I am not going to tell him not to do that, but in a game with maybe some bigger players you are going to have to take that jumper. But this is one of those teams, like Shai said, watching us in Toronto, every guy can pass, dribble and shoot, so it leaves you to play a little different; you know, what we are running. We were random some of the time and you have to admit, it was like wow. We were random, we had great pace, you know, we got to the next action.

So that, you know, what you are trying to do is make the decision, make the defense make decisions. How many decisions can you make them make? Well, if you are only dancing with the ball and then shooting, there were no decisions to make. But if you do a dribble hand-off, if you do a pass and a cut and a swing and a kickback, they are making eight, 10 decisions, somebody’s going to screw up. That’s randomness of the game of what we are trying to do.

So...

We have a lot of guys that if they don’t shoot open 3s or open shots, you know, I don’t want them to just, that’s their game, but I do want them to shoot it.

Q. You have used that word a couple of times tonight now, random, talking about the offense and guys cutting and moving. So from your perspective, how can you get them to be random and can you intentionally teach that? How much do you have to have your hands off the product for that to be the end result?

Well, some of it is getting them started. Like doing actions so that the ball moves and there’s some penetration and cutting and then it becomes random. What you saw against Georgetown is we stood. So now you are trying to make it random. You have nowhere to go. But now we are cutting and opening enough gaps to go.

So it’s — what I want them to do is play off of one another, get to the next action. We’re a good shooting team, so we’re going to shoot. But you don’t want to live and die with the 3. You want it to be at the rim, you want to draw fouls, and then you are looking — I like 3s, I love layups and something at the rim and getting fouled. And this should be a great free-throw shooting team.

Q. With the return of Antonio Reeves, where do you think he has improved at from this season compared to last season?

The biggest thing is his self-confidence. And it is not what we are doing, it is what he is. He is so much more at ease. He talks so much more. When you walk into this program, it is difficult. And there’s a ton of anxiety. Am I good enough? What is going on? Every team you play, like even Kentucky State made shots to start this game, like everybody does against us. And, so, that was hard. Finding his way within that team was hard. But by the end of the year, he was really an effective player. Now he is more physical. Now he will mix it up. Now he talks more on defense.

And offensively, you know, he’s figured out how do I get to the rim some. He is way better than he was a year ago. I mean, he was a good player last year but his confidence in himself right now, you know, he is self-assured. He doesn’t make — we did — maybe it was the first game. He missed shots and then came out in the second half and made shots. Last year that never happened. If he missed 7, he was missing 13. Now he will miss shots and come back and have enough confidence that it’s not fazing me, I’m going to make this next one, I’m going to make the next one, and that is how he played.

Thanks, guys.

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