Cats not focused on undefeated season

By: LARRY VAUGHT



Kentucky coach John Calipari said Tuesday that one game is “not life and death” and that he has not talked to his team about the possibility of an unbeaten season going into Thursday night’s game at Missouri, a team UK beat by 39 points earlier this season.

“Our whole thing is if we'll play with energy, we'll have a chance. Doesn't mean we win every game. And again, we're not ... the thought of, 'You have to win every game' or going undefeated, we're not talking about that,” said Calipari Monday. We're talking about, 'How do we come every game with energy so we know we have a chance to win?' How do we do that?

“How do we sustain that energy throughout a game? How do we come when teams are going to come after us and still have fun? How do we limit our errors so that our errors are forced errors, not unforced errors? It's all those things we're worrying about, about our team. And that's what we'll do today. I'm not going to talk much about Missouri. I'm talking about us."

Would Calipari ever reach a point he would embrace an unbeaten season as a team goal? "It's not what I want. It's what they want,” he said of his players.

He said he had “no idea” if the players want to be unbeaten.

“We don't ever talk about it. It hasn't entered my mind,” Calipari said.

He recalled his unbeaten team at Memphis that lost at the buzzer at home to Tennessee when the Tigers made a late turnover and the Vols hit a 3-pointer to win.

“Was that lucky for us or unlucky for us? It all depends how you deal with it,” Calipari said. "For us, from that game, my team went whoop, bing — beat, in the NCAA Tournament, Michigan (State) by 30 at halftime, Texas in Houston, UCLA. And we have a nine-point lead (against Kansas) with two minutes to go, miss free throws, lose the national title. Tennessee, on the other hand, it was not good for them. It was unlucky because they beat us and went like that (downward ) from there on in and finished the season with a dud."

He pointed out that UK’s 2012 national championship team lost at Indiana and both teams went on to have successful season before UK elminated the Hoosiers in NCAA play.

“The Indiana game: was that lucky for us or lucky for them? Was that good for us or good for them. From that point, my team went there, but you know what, it was pretty good for them,” Calipari said. “The problem was they had to face us again and it wasn't so lucky that they had beaten us early, because there was no way my team wasn't gonna win that game.

“And it was a great game, and they lost by 10. We're just trying to get better. We'll deal with things as they come. Got a great group of kids."

Kentucky has won 19 straight games and freshman guard Devin Booker said anyone wondering if UK might get bored with winning is wrong.

“I’ve never heard of that. I don’t think we get bored of winning. I don’t think any of us want to lose. Every game we go out there and try to win,” he said.

Like Calipari, he said an unbeaten season was not openly discussed by the players.

“We know that’d be unbelievable to do from the start, but, like I said, every time we go out on the court we try to win. It’s not really in out mindset, ‘We have to go undefeated.’ If anything, we feel like we have to win a championship more than we have to go undefeated, so if we lose a game here or there, I just hope we finish out in March,” Booker said.