UK MEN’S BASKETBALL POSTGAME NOTES
KENTUCKY vs. AUBURN
NCAA TOURNAMENT, MIDWEST REGION FINAL
SPRINT CENTER | KANSAS CITY, MO.
MARCH 31, 2019
ATTENDANCE: 17,174
Final Score: Auburn 77, Kentucky 71 (OT)
Team Records and Series Notes• Kentucky finishes the season 30-7 overall. Auburn is 30-9.o UK entered the game ranked No. 7 nationally and the No. 2 seed in the Midwest Region.o Auburn entered ranked No. 14/18 nationally and the No. 5 seed in the Midwest. • Kentucky leads the series 94-20, including two wins by UK during the 2019 regular season. This was the first time the teams have met in the NCAA Tournament.
In the First Half• Kentucky started the combination of Ashton Hagans, Tyler Herro, Keldon Johnson, EJ Montgomery and Reid Travis for the fourth straight game.• Kentucky jumped out to a 7-0 lead and led by as many as 11 points at 22-11.• UK led 30-20 with three minutes left but Auburn went on a 10-2 run to narrow the gap to 32-30.• Hagans hit a 3-pointer with 11 seconds remaining to send the Wildcats to the locker room ahead 35-30.
In the Second Half• Kentucky began the second half with the starting lineup.• UK scored the first basket of the half but Auburn came back with 10 straight points to go ahead 40-37, the Tigers’ first lead of the game.• UK reclaimed the lead at 45-44 on a steal by Johnson, leading to a fast-break alley-oop dunk by Washington.• Auburn went back ahead 47-46 on a 3-pointer by Bryce Brown.• Trailing 56-50, UK cobbled together an 8-2 run to tie it at 58 with 2:55 remaining. • Washington rebounded his own miss and scored with 56 seconds left to shove UK back ahead. • Auburn’s Jared Harper tied it at 60 on a driving layup with 37 seconds left and neither team scored on its final possession to send it to overtime.
In the Overtime• Kentucky began the overtime with Hagans, Herro, Johnson, Washington and Travis.• Auburn scored the first four points of overtime and the Tigers never trailed en route to the 77-71 win.
Team Notes• Auburn shot 40 percent today. UK is 182-16 (.919) under Calipari when keeping the opponents to 40 percent or less, including 18-1 this season.• Kentucky won the rebounding, 41-37. UK is 25-5 this season when outrebounding the opponent.• UK is 260-6 (.977) under Calipari when leading by 10 or more points at any time during the game.• PJ Washington and Keldon Johnson each had a double-double today. The last time UK had two players with double-doubles was the January 19 win over Kansas. • UK is 7-5 this season vs. Associated Press Top 25 opponents.• This was Kentucky’s second overtime game of the year, also vs. Seton Hall.
Player Notes • Playing on a sprained foot, PJ Washington led all players with 28 points and 13 rebounds. He added two steals and two blocked shots.• It is his ninth double-double of the year and 12th of his career.• The 28 points is one shy of his career high set earlier this season vs. Seton Hall.• Keldon Johnson notched his fourth double-double of the season with 14 points and 10 rebounds.• Ashton Hagans reached double figures with 10 points, adding five rebounds and three assists.• In his final game as a Wildcat, Reid Travis scored nine points on 4-of-5 shooting and had six rebounds. • Tyler Herro had seven points, three rebounds and a game-high six assists. The six assists are one shy of his career high set vs. Winthrop.
In the NCAA Tournament• Kentucky has an all-time record of 129-52 in the NCAA Tournament, more wins than any team in NCAA history.• UK made its NCAA record 58th appearance in the tournament.• UK is 25-8 as the No. 2 seed in the tournament. UK is 8-4vs. No. 5 seeds.• This was Kentucky’s 10th overtime game in the NCAA Tournament and UK is now 4-6 in OT games.• UK is 31-8 in the NCAA Tournament under Calipari.
Calipari• Calipari is now 305-71 at UK. • Calipari has a 750-211 all-time on-court record.• Calipari has a 56-19 record in the NCAA Tournament, including 31-8 at Kentucky.• Calipari is 6-6 in Elite 8 games, including 4-3 at Kentucky. • UK is 59-31 vs. AP Top-25 competition under Calipari. • Calipari is 82-54 in his career when both teams are ranked in the AP Top 25, including 51-27 at Kentucky.
NCAA MEN’S REGIONAL SEMIFINALS AND FINALS: KANSAS CITY
March 31, 2019
John Calipari
PJ Washington
Reid Travis
Kansas City, Missouri
Auburn – 77 Kentucky – 71
THE MODERATOR: Kentucky Wildcats are here for a ten-minute session. John Calipari will open up with a statement. We have Reid Travis and PJ Washington with him. After the statement, we’ll have questions for all three gentlemen from Kentucky.
John, please.
JOHN CALIPARI: Congratulations to Auburn. Did what they had to do to win the game. They played aggressive and tough, they bumped, and it was a grinding kind of game. Two of their guys had 50 points. Think about that. They deserved to win the game. We got outplayed, got outcoached, and still had a chance to win the game. I thought we were going to win the game the whole way until the one or two plays in overtime. Never entered my mind we weren’t going to win the game.
Proud of these guys. Proud of my team. We didn’t play particularly well, but give them credit for making us play poorly.
Q. PJ and Reid, defensively they do anything differently in the second half or overtime to take you out of the stuff that you normally like to do?
PJ WASHINGTON: They pressured us on defense. They tried to make all the catches hard, and they were boxing out and getting rebounds. They forced us to get one shot up and got back in transition and scored every time.
REID TRAVIS: Just second that. Big part of what we do is rebounding, offensive rebounding. They just came out, trying to be more physical, deny catches is on us for letting them be effective at that.
Q. PJ, like can you just describe where the confidence was going into overtime after such good — like at regulation, you guys played so well?
PJ WASHINGTON: We had a lot of confidence. We tied the game up, and we felt like we had a chance to win. You can’t have — you can’t not have confidence in a situation like that. So I mean, definitely have to have confidence and feel like you’re winning the game at all times of the game.
Q. John, what went into the decision to keep Ashton Hagans at point guard, especially as he kept turning it over?
JOHN CALIPARI: Well, you go through a whole season and some of the stuff you have to understand is bigger than one game. I know everybody will go nuts and say what are you talking about? There are times you have to let guys play through stuff and you got to get them to change on run. Then they understand that the only thing they’re trying to conquer is themselves. If you don’t like how you’re playing, change. Immanuel couldn’t make a shot. So he wasn’t exactly playing confidently, either.
We put Jemarl in. He got scored on a few times right there and fouled it. I felt comfortable with Ashton. I know he was turning it over and — but you know, Tyler — we just — guys didn’t play well. I want to tell you that I got to give Auburn credit for really getting up in and bumping and grinding and doing some stuff that got these guys a little off kilter.
We were able to play and throw it inside, and I thought we did a good job to survive. You’ve got to have better perimeter play and we have all year until today. Now, I’m going to give credit to Auburn. I’m not saying that’s why we lost.
They made us play the way we did, but when you look at it, we held them to 40 percent, 30 percent from the 3. We out-rebounded them by 4. We outshot them from the floor. They shot more free throws. It’s not because of officiating. First game we played in a long time that someone shot more free throws than us because of how we play. We want you to grab us. That’s how we play. Try to go at the goal.
That being said, the numbers say that boy, you should have won. We had a few too many turnovers at inopportune times. That kind changed the game.
Q. You guys got them into massive amounts of foul trouble in the paint. Why is it, what did they do differently that maybe you guys couldn’t put them away when you had the big lead?
REID TRAVIS: I mean, they’re a scrappy team. We knew even if we had a lead, that’s a team that can get hot quick. Felt like there were some plays that balls we didn’t come up with, they able to get 3s out of it, get free throws and fouled. Right on the brink of kind of changing that lead, they were able to come back and get hustle plays and felt like that really sparked them going forward.
PJ WASHINGTON: Yeah, piggyback on what he said. We missed a couple shots and they got in the offense and made the most out of it, made 3s.
Q. Coach Cal, this has been the best free throw shooting team you have. Today guys go 12 of 21 at the line. Anybody you can attribute to that?
JOHN CALIPARI: No. Stuff happens. I mean it’s just — it happens. Let me say this: All that set aside, we still could have won the game. One play, one shot, one rebound. I’ll say this to everyone here: The hard thing when you’re coaching young kids like really young, that when we had four days to prepare for Houston, we could really dig down and drill and drill. When you have 36 hours and you say do not let them drive right and you show them on tape, you go over it but you don’t have time — they shot 15 layups right-handed today. Do not let them — the last one they just drove in and went right and shot it.
Again, when you’re talking 17 and 18-year-old kids, there’s going to be slippage sometime. The same with free throw shooting. Sometimes you get up against it and you miss some shots. But I’ll just tell you, this team, and I’ll get off point on this, what a joy it was to coach this year. I mean, I had more fun and I still challenged them, I still held them accountable. I was on guys, but I knew that they would respond and I knew that they were going to be in that gym and going to work and share and sacrifice for each other.
That’s why I wish the season kept going. I mean, I wanted to see one more weekend, wanted Reid to be able to go back to Minnesota, which he deserved for what he’s done for this program and us, but this is — when it’s one game, oh, you beat them twice. Once you beat them by 30, doesn’t matter. One game. This was stuff that happens.
Q. Reid, can you put into words — you were very emotional after the game. What goes through your mind when that final horn sounds?
REID TRAVIS: I mean, just a lot of emotions. As far as this being my last college game, been through a lot of adversity, lot of ups and downs. Obviously being able to come here, it’s been a blessing and thankful for the opportunities. Lot of emotions not being able to finish it the way I wanted to, but that doesn’t take away from the experience that I had. This has been one of the best years of my life playing basketball, and I just wanted to end it the right way with this group of guys.
Q. Cal, you touched on it a second ago. Could you elaborate on what Reid meant to this program over the last year?
JOHN CALIPARI: To have a guy come to this program and absolutely trust — we never promised him he would start or how many minutes. I don’t do that. But having enough trust to know and enough faith in himself to come here and then through the ups and downs, what we’re doing never changes, what a great lesson if anybody else was watching and all these young kids were watching.
The other thing is, you know, it just shows that you can do the academics here, you can do the basketball here, you can be a great person, you can — and Kentucky fits that.
But I just tell you personally, what a pleasure. I got on him, too, now. What a pleasure to coach him. He responded. You know, with the injury, you know, I told him, “If you can’t come back, I’m good.”
“Don’t you — I’m coming back.” He worked and he did it and, you know, just — it just stings, but this is part of sports. I feel sick, feel sick for these kids. I’ll go back, is there anything else we could have done, is there any other ways we could have played?
I tried just about everything, but I’ll probably find four, five things I should have done or tried. Right now, couldn’t tell you what those are, but I probably will spend some time that way with myself. But for him, he’s put himself in a great position and he helped this program. I couldn’t be more thankful and blessed that I had a chance to coach him.
THE MODERATOR: Thank you, John.
Thank you gentlemen. Congratulations on a great season.
FastScripts Transcript by ASAP Sports