Freshman James Young got to face the media Monday after Kentucky’s loss at Baylor Friday and before the Cats play host to Boise State Tuesday night. Here’s part of what he had to say.
On the team’s mentality after the loss …
“We’ve recovered. No pressure at all, we’ve just got to get in the gym and just work hard.”
On how surprising this is …
“It’s kind of surprising, but we just didn’t play to our full potential. That’s what can happen if we don’t come to our full game. So we’re just going to try to let it go and try to recover.”
On Calipari being mad about the loss …
“Oh yeah, he was pretty mad and we were too. We just have to get in the gym. Yesterday we were in here for a couple hours and just keep practicing.”
On why they got outworked …
“I think it was just the lack of communication that we had. We did not come out with as much fire as we should have and just really we were supposed to pick it up in the beginning of the game and we really let that go. They got a little lead and we had to come back.”
On free throws being a problem …
“Not really. We just probably lost focus and we’ve got to stay focused. Mental discipline and Coach always points that out. We need to stay focused a little more.”
On how big a concern defense is …
“We can play defense, it’s just we tend to stop sometimes and that’s what will really get us. We’ve just got to keep playing through the whole possession and not stop.”
On whether he is more eager to play after a loss …
“Yeah, definitely. We love big games and we’ve just got to come out and show everybody that we do. We just can’t let stuff like that happen anymore.”
On fans expecting the team to play like veterans …
“Yeah, we’re young just like some of the other teams and we’ve just got a lot to learn. We just take it day by day and Coach just gives us a lot and we try to take it in.”
On fans’ strong reactions to early losses …
“I don’t know. I’ve never seen stuff like that happen before, but it’s just another loss, I feel like. We only have two, so I feel like if we just keep moving we’ll learn.”
On hearing from fans on social media …
“Not really. I don’t really bother much with Twitter. I didn’t really hear anything.”
On the importance of December …
“It’s pretty important to us. We’re just going to take it game by game. I’m pretty sure we can get the W if we just play hard the whole game.”
On his free throw shooting …
“I just tend to lose focus when I’m tired, so that’s what it is. I just need to work on my conditioning more, get my fatigue up and I’ll be fine.”
On Boise State …
“They’re pretty good, like Coach said, and we’ve just got to play hard. We’ve just got to out-tough them, muscle them a little bit. We have a height advantage, so if we use all our height I feel like we’ll be good.”
On what Calipari has said about Boise State …
“That they’re really talented. We have to worry about everybody on the court. It’s not just our offense we need to worry about. We need to worry about defense as well.”
On whether Calipari is different after a loss …
“No, he’s the same. He tries to let it go as well as we do and we just try to keep moving forward.”
On what advantage veteran teams have …
“They’ve just been together longer so they have that chemistry. So we’ve just been working on ours because we haven’t been together for a while, but we’re getting stronger and I think we’ll improve more.”
On Rico Gathers saying UK was “stunned” when Baylor got after them …
“They came at us with a lot of intensity and we just try to not worry about it as much. We let it go and just keep moving forward.”
On what they are still learning about each other …
“Our play style. A lot of guys have different play styles, so once we get everybody’s style down I feel like we’ll be a real good team.”
On whether it felt like they might never make it back from Dallas …
“Yeah. It seems like every time we go out of town there’s always a delay in our flight. But it took a while to get back and I was just eager to get back here.”
On whether the delay was especially hard after a loss …
“Yeah, because we just had to sit there and dwell on it more sitting there on the plane. It was a long day.”
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