By LARRY VAUGHT
Kentucky coach John Calipari wants his team communicating and says often this year there has not been enough talking.
Sometimes, though, Hamidou Daillo admits he talks at the wrong time when he goes back and forth with coaches on the bench. He says it should not be hard to stop doing that.
"It's just emotions and mistakes and that's just something that can't happen. That's something that's been addressed. Coming from me as a leader, I just gotta do better at that and I gotta know that coming into every game I can't be talking back to my coach on the bench,” Diallo said.
While that might sound bad going into Saturday night’s game at No. 7 West Virginia, don’t overreact because Calipari doesn’t. He’s often had players express their differing opinions during games and says it’s just part of the maturing process.
"I just feel like I gotta get better at every aspect of my game. I know what type of player I am. I'm a two-way type of player. I'm a defender, energy guy and pretty much I'm a war guy out there. I'm an alpha dog and I just gotta get a better feel for the game, work on my game,” Diallo said. “Keep on polishing my handle, keep on polishing my jump shot and just keep getter better every day, day in and day out."
Kentucky lost at Tennessee and South Carolina. West Virginia figures to have an even more charged up atmosphere with ESPN College GameDay present and this also being UK’s first game in Morgantown, W.Va., since 1970.
“They have great fans down there and it's a great basketball town. It's going to be really loud and really active and a lot of hatred towards us once we walk in the arena,” Diallo said Friday before the Cats left Lexington. “So we just gotta stay together and really try to dig in and listen and be able to relay calls and be able to speak to each other on the court.
“This is definitely going to be a crazy crowd and it's just something that we gotta dig in. Like I said earlier, we gotta dig in, talk to each other and make sure that we're together. It's going to be 15, 20 of us, maybe, on the bench and on the court and we just all gotta be for each other at that moment."
“This is a big game for us as a team. It's a big game for us as whole unit and we just gotta go out there and leave it all out there on the floor. Losing isn't a fun feeling, so we just gotta make sure that when we're out there we know that we have an agenda, and that agenda is to win."
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