John Calipari participated in a media conference call Wednesday for the Basketball Hall of Fame’s Tip-Off Tournament, which begins Friday with Kentucky’s regular-season opener against Marist. UK will then head to Uncasville, Conn., next weekend for two games before closing out the tournament at home on Nov. 23 against Radford.
Head coaches from all eight schools in the tournament were allotted 10 minutes of time to answer questions from the call’s mediator, Paul Lambert. Check out the summary of Coach Cal’s segment of the call.
- Thoughts on Marist – Marist head coach Chuck Martin was an assistant to Calipari at Memphis, so the two are very familiar with each other. Cal thinks this may be the year Marist breaks through after a large turnover of seniors and a few transfers. “He’s doing a fine job,” Calipari said. “I know Chuck as a person, as a coach, as a recruiter and as a father and I have a lot of faith in him.”
- On how the Tip-Off Tournament games will help the Cats – Coach talked about how important it is to have road games early in the season, especially for a young team. He said that sometimes teams that play nothing but home games in November find themselves in trouble once league play starts. It’s no coincidence that three of the Kentucky’s first four games are on the road. He mentioned that early road games go a long way in toughening a team up.
- On Terrence Jones’ offseason improvement – Calipari basically summed up the key to Jones’ improvement in one word: change. He indicated that Jones worked hard to change his body this offseason, saying that he might be the best physically conditioned player on the team. He not only changed his body, but his mental approach to the game as well. “He’s got a competitive spirit, focus and concentration level that he didn’t have a year ago,” Calipari said. “He’s just way better. He’s not even the same guy in my opinion.”
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