Kentucky's impressive play no surprise to Lyles

By: LARRY VAUGHT

LEXINGTON — Kentucky’s impressive play this season has not surprised freshman Trey Lyles.

“I definitely knew that we had this capability. We just had to lock in and fall in love with playing defense, and just fall in love with Coach’s plan of having the two platoons,” said Lyles. “We’re just unselfish. Everyone is for one another, and we just want to see everyone be successful.”

Kentucky hopes to continue that success Sunday when it hosts Providence, its best test since a 32-point win over No. 5 Kansas in Indianapolis.

“Nobody on the team is selfish. Nobody cares about just themselves, they care about everyone on the team and they want to see them do good,” Lyles said.

While coach John Calipari says sharing minutes and statistics is the big story for UK basketball this year, Lyles said the team-oriented play was not a big adjustment for him.

“For me, my team, we had a lot of unselfish guys (in high school). So it wasn’t that hard switching over,” Lyles said.

It’s the same way about keeping his focus when UK has a big lead like it has had every game this season.

“We’ve just gotta go out there and push ourselves. I mean, me, individually, just gotta get down and guard those smaller guys, just work on playing hard and playing with energy all the time,” Lyles said.

Calipari said after Tuesday’s win over Texas-Arlington that both Lyles and Alex Poythress had to improve guarding smaller players on the perimeter since they are alternating at small forward.

“Usually, in high school, I played against the biggest guy, and I guarded them. It’s definitely something I’m going to have to get used to,” Lyles said. “Us not having to guard smaller guys on the perimeter — a lot of the time, when we’ve played in the past, he’s expecting a lot out of us now playing the 3 spot, getting down low and guarding those perimeter guys. I guarded the biggest guy on the team (in high school), so it’s definitely different now.”

Another difficult adjustment has been practice the day after games.

“That’s pretty tough. Your body’s still sore or wore down, but Coach expects it out of us and we push ourselves to our limits. So it definitely helps,” Lyles said.

That practice mentality, though, helps set the tone for the defense Calipari demands even from centers like Karl-Anthony Towns and Dakari Johnson.

“If we can get stops on defense, offense is going to create itself — fast break points, and bigs getting down before the other ones to score, just, defense, we’re going to have to keep our mind on,” Lyles said. “We’ve just gotta go out there and play with energy and Karl’s done that. Everybody’s doing it, Dakari’s doing it, you know, we’re just going out there and playing with energy, and, just, you know, Karl is running the floor hard, rebounding, so that’s all we can ask for him.

“We all decided to buy in, ‘cause we know that, defensively, if we can make stops and get extra opportunities offensively, everybody’s going to be happy. And coach really prides himself and us playing defense, and that’s one thing he harps on us every day in practice — to play defense.”