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Question: How good do you expect Kentucky to be this year?
Dean: “I have no idea because I don’t watch high school basketball and keep up with high school basketball. I know what I read and obviously the players Kentucky has brought in are highly rated and have a lot of hype. I just have to assume they are very talented. I have a lot of respect for John Calipari’s ability to recruit to Kentucky and evaluate talent and coach them up and prepare them for the next level. I really believe this Kentucky team will be much better than last year’s Kentucky team. The freshmen from what I hear about Randle and the Harrison twins are so strong that I have a feeling they will go back to the way they were when they brought in John Wall and Brandon Knight and Anthony Davis with new teams. I have a feeling this team will have incredible talent that can just walk right in and have an impact.
“With all that said, I am going to pick Florida to win the league only because they are a veteran team with players who aren’t going to be intimidated by the hype and talent of the young Kentucky players. I think it will be two great games when they play each other. I think those two teams will battle for the SEC championship. Tennessee might have a chance. Talent-wise they have a chance to hang in there, but I don’t know if they can hang with Kentucky and Florida to win the league. It will be one of those three, but I am going to pick Florida. I like Florida in a close race over Kentucky to win the regular season championship. I was one of the five (who voted in the SEC preseason poll) to pick Florida. I picked Kentucky two, Tennesssee three and LSU four.”
Question: Did you vote for Kentucky freshman Julius Randle for SEC preseason player of the year?
Dean: “I did not. I picked Wilie Cauley-Stein of Kentucky on my top five. I just don’t know anything about Julius Randle. I hear he is incredible and if he is, I will congratulate him like Anthony Davis. I would not have voted Anthony Davis when he came in. I haven’t seen and don’t know. Maybe other media more of a feel. But I like to pick kids that have been in the league and proven they can play in the league. I picked Jarnell Stokes of Tennessee as player of the year. I think he is a tremendous player, great team player, high character kid.”
Question: Why did you put Cauley-Stein in your top five picks?
Dean: “I like his upside. I thought he really got better as the season went on. He is a 7-footer and when you see that guy was a successful receiver in football, that tells you the kind of athleticism he has. I like all the athletic attributes he has. He is long, he can shoot the ball facing (the basket), he is a shot blocker and I love his attitude. He is very coachable and team-oriented. I think he can be a leader on the team.”
Question: Will having more talent around him help him?
Dean: “He will probably get lot a little bit in all the talent. I would compare him to Patrick Patterson on Calipari’s first team. An older guy who had been throught he wars that can kind of be the leader and player with experience who can talk to younger guys about what it will be like. I spent six years at Kentucky and you don’t understand the pressure that is there day in, day out when you are everybody’s biggest game. I don’t care how talented a freshman you are, you have no clue what that is like until you go through it. Go to Starkville, Athens and Gainesville and the crowds are sold out and all over you the minute you walk into the gym. To do that nine times (in the SEC) can be hard. That’s what they have to learn and Willie can be a leader.”
Question: What did you think of Alex Poythress last year?
Dean: “I think we are going to find out what kind of competitor he is. He obviously is very talented, but last year to be quite frank regardless of how they played they didn’t have anybody they could sub in for him and sit him on the bench. Even though they were disappoitned with him and didn’t play as hard as he needed all the time ... I was at some practices with him when coach Cal was on him pretty hard. They had to play him. It won’t be that way this year. If he doesn’t go out and play and show leadership and toughness and play the way Coach Cal wants him to play, he will be over on the bench and will stay there this year. We will find out what type of competitor he is. I want to give him the benefit of the doubt and say he will step up to the challenge and do the job. Lord knows he has all the God-given talent in the world. It’s just a matter of him mentally saying I am going to do it. Until he starts thinking, ‘I am the best player out here on this court,’ and playing like that, he will always maybe be considered an underachiever.”
Question: Could the UK atmosphere have overwhelmed him last year?
Dean: “I don’t know. It could be. It is a brutal environment. He’s a nice kid, but to walk into that environment with 24,000 for Big Blue Madness, it can be overwhelming. I don’t think he was prepared for the intensity of the college game at Kentucky. There is a different level of intensity at Kentucky than there is other programs. He was not ready for it. He should be ready this year.”
Question: If he had played at another school last year and had the same numbers, would he have been criticized as much?
Dean: “Absolutely not. Really if he is smart, he will realize that has been healthy for him. If he had gone to another program where he was considered the man and they were much more tolerant of his lackadaisical play or lack of intensity and had still allowed him to get away with it, it would have been a disservice to him as a player trying to get to the nextl level. At Kentucky, coach Calipari held him accountable every single day. I think that’s what that young man needs.”
Question: Is there any chance team chemistry could be an issue on a team so talented and deep?
Dean: “As you analyze, this is John’s fifth year at Kentucky and every year has been the same — a brand new crop of freshmen that have had to lead the way talent-wise for Kentucky. What John has done in four years at Kentucky is unprecedented in college basketball. I have unbelievable respect for what he has done. There are very few people who could have done what he has done. Now this is his fifth year and the only difference is that he has more freshmen, more new players than before. He has nine new players. That’s a little different animal than what he’s used to with the other four teams where he could plug them right in and off he goes. I think he will have more of a challenge keeping these kids happy. But they have to keep him happy. The message has to be is that we are Kentucky, ranked in the top five, everybody’s biggest game, but we all benefit if we win and contend for the championship. If you buy into that message, you will be successful, we will be successful and everybody will win.”
Question: What do you make of Calipari adding in-state players Dominique Hawkins and Derek Willis to his freshman class?
Dean: “It makes me nervous. When I was there, there was a train of thought with Kentucky high school players that if you were going to bring them to Kentucky, they had to be capable of starting at Kentucky at some point in their career. If they were not, then the fan base in Maysville, Paducah, Danville, Pikeville would be upset because they think those kids are the greatest thing in the world. I think there are two trains of thought. To me, I think it is a mistake to bring a Kentucky high school player to Kentucky if you don’t believe that he can be a major contributor to the program.”
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