By LARRY VAUGHT
No one has to tell Kentucky junior center Willie Cauley-Stein that he has not been playing well lately.
“I just haven’t been playing like I should be playing,” he said before Thursday’s practice to get ready for Saturday night’s game at Florida. “Just not scoring, not playing defense like normal. Stuff happens, I don’t know. You just gotta get back to it.”
Cauley-Stein offered no excuses for his recent play, but Kentucky coach John Calipari did point out that the ankle he hurt in last year’s NCAA Tournament that required surgery has been bothering him.
"He's a little hurt. Ankle's bothering him a little bit, but there's no reason for him not to have the numbers — double digit scoring and rebounding even with the minutes because he is probably one of the guys that is getting a little more minutes."
Calipari didn’t seem worried that the injury was serious.
“It's been scanned and double-scanned and triple-scanned and MRI'd. May be scar tissue,” Calipari before describing it mainly as a “sore ankle” Cauley-Stein was dealing with.
The junior said he has been staying in the gym after practice to “get back to the stuff that I was doing at the beginning of the year I got away from” in recent games.
“It’s just like, just the same stuff I’ve always been doing, I just got away from it. As the season goes on you just start to get like wear and tear and you stop doing what got you there, so now I’m just trying to do what got me so high up and then just keep on building off of it,” he said.
When he’s playing his best, Cauley-Stein says it is easy to tell.
“It just feels fun. I feel like I’m having fun, I look like I’m having fun. If I’m not playing then I don’t look like I’m having fun. That’s the biggest part about it,” he said. “I mean other times you’re just not having a good day. I mean you’re not just, getting beat off the dribble that you never get beat off the dribble on, or you’re missing shots that you hit 63 percent of the time.”
He said teams have tried to be physical with him for three years, so that’s nothing new that should bother him.
“I mean, you get used to it. It doesn’t really bother you, you just play through it. It’s more mental than anything,” he said.
Calipari compared Cauley-Stein’s not having fun comment to being in a boxing match.
“You walk in and the other dude's knocking you around, it's just not fun. And if you're moving and sticking, in and out, talking, you said, man am I having fun. Yeah, cause you're being the aggressor and you're beating him up. If you're standing there and you're not the aggressor and you're not — it's not fun. It's hard,” Calipari said before pointing out that John Wall said the same thing about not having fun late in his one season at UK.
“World-class athletes figure out how to enjoy all of this, and we're trying to get these guys to know that."
Cauley-Stein says he doesn’t always realize he’s not having fun on the court.
“At the time I don’t realize that I look that way, but it’s more or less like, ‘Dang, I’m not scoring,’ or ‘I should’ve got that rebound,’ so then you’re just thinking about that,” Cauley-Stein said. “Then vice versa, when you’re doing all that stuff your energy is so high cause you’re doing the right things, doing the right things. By the end of it you look back and you see you were flying and doing all this other stuff and then, the other way around, you’re just kinda there, out there. Maybe you’ll make a play one time and then another 10 plays will come by and you make a play. It’s just slow for you.”
He says it should not be difficult to maintain a fun level of play.
“It just depends on how your body feels, how you feel, like some days you just don’t (have) it, your body’s worn out and you can’t do the stuff you do when your body’s like fresh,” Cauley-Stein said.
Point guard Tyler Ulis said they just need Cauley-Stein to “play like Willie” in games.
“He’s a great defensive player. Offensively, he’s doing a lot better I feel like. If he feels like that then that’s great. He’s going to put more work in. He’s not complacent. With him, he’s just a great asset to our team, blocking shots defensively, being able to guard 1-5. Having him is great,” Ulis said.
“I feel like Willie has been playing good offensively. We fed him in the post the past couple games. He’s made some turnaround shots, some hook shots. So he feels like he’s not playing that well right now, which is good for us — that’s telling us he’s not complacent with his game, he’s going to come out ready to play and we can’t wait to see what he does.”