5 John Calipari Quotes of Note Following Baylor Loss

Here are 5 quotes of note from John Calipari following Arkansas’ 72-67 loss to No. 8 Baylor at the American Airlines Center in Dallas on Saturday:

Trouble With The Zone

Baylor threw a curveball out of the gates by implementing a zone defense against the Razorbacks, and it took a full half of hot potato around the perimeter and settling for threes before Arkansas made adjustments and started to find success in the second half offensively.

“First half,  it can’t be on them because we just haven’t worked that much against zone because we haven’t scrimmaged. We haven’t had…  we’ve had five guys for weeks. Halftime we went in and said, all right, we got to do this way and I think you saw that we moved the ball.

“I’ve coached against Scott. He’ll go to that 1-1-3. He’ll even go to a 1-3-1. He’ll… No, he does it.  The press they used, we all knew what they were doing. We just had one turnover to try to… We have our zone stuff in, but we’re trying to get our man stuff in. This is a brand-new team. These guys never played together. But we got organized and they came back and they did their thing.”

Thiero Brings Thunder to Dallas

Arkansas junior Adou Thiero was arguably the best player on the floor Saturday, finishing with a game-high 24 points on 10 of 15 shooting with a pair of threes, six rebounds, two assists, two blocks and a steal.

“He’s in attack mode now. Instead of messing with the ball, he’s in attack mode. Now he can get to where he needs to go. Probably got to get him to do a little stride-stop so if he gets stuck, he can turn and make plays for his teammates. That may be one of the things he can do for us. But he also defended a very physical guy, so he was doing a little bit of everything.”

Richmond Relishing in Increased Role

After serving as the de facto ninth man in the rotation during the preseason, freshman wing Billy Richmond has quickly seen his role increase during the regular season. Saturday, he had four points, two rebounds and a block, but really stood out with his energy and defensive intensity in 12 minutes.

“Billy just gives you another aggressive guy out there and he did good. He’s our third point guard, maybe he’s our second point guard. So, I want him to play like that. He had one turnover on a cross-court pass and, you know. But that’s the way he played, the way we’re able to press when he’s in there, he did good things.”

Calipari Proud of Arkansas’ Fight

Arkansas has plenty to work on moving forward, but one thing the Razorbacks certainly proved was that they will not go down without a fight. Calipari’s crew put together several big runs throughout the contest, but could never quite get over the hump and take control.

“We fought. We never gave up. We gave ourselves a chance. We took five bad shots at critical times and you’re trying to explain to the players, they’re not bailing you out, so go in there to make the shot or pass it to somebody. 

“This showed me some good stuff. We got a lot of work to do. I still think my team’s pretty good. Gotta make a shot or two.  You don’t have to make them all. You just can’t miss them all.  We gotta make our share and we got good shooters. We really do. So work to do, but we’ll see.”

Much Learned From Marquee Matchup

Arkansas was one of a minority of teams across the country that scheduled aggressively in the first week of the college basketball season. Despite the loss, Calipari feels he learned more about his team against Baylor than he would have facing a lesser opponent in a buy game.

“A lot. Like, you could play a team and try to win by 50 and what you learn is that you can beat that kind of team by 50. But the teams you’re trying to compete with are like this team, like a Kansas. These kind of people that we’re playing, and then playing them away from our building is important too.

“You don’t have the home crowd riding you, can we come together and do this? And let me say, I want to thank all the Arkansas fans because they were crazy. Half the building was Arkansas people. I’m just disappointed we didn’t win, but I hope they say they fought, they tried, they’re doing some good things. I can see they have a ways to go but it’s a good group.”