John Calipari explains what he learned about his UK team after a gutsy road win at Florida

Kentucky’s start to SEC play in the 2023-24 season wasn’t an easy one, but it was victorious.

Despite leading for only 5:25 of game time, the No. 6-ranked Wildcats emerged victorious Saturday at Florida to begin conference play.

Fifth-year stalwarts Tre Mitchell and Antonio Reeves carried UK during an otherwise lackluster first half, but it was the freshmen who came alive in the second half to power the Wildcats to a win.

Freshman guard D.J. Wagner sparked the offense out of halftime, Aaron Bradshaw hit an open 3-pointer with less than 90 seconds left to grab the lead for good and Reed Sheppard sealed the deal with clutch foul shots in the closing seconds.

Since John Calipari became Kentucky’s head coach in 2009, the Wildcats have won or tied for the SEC regular-season title six times, the last of which came in the 2019-20 season.

UK took a positive first step toward a 50th regular-season SEC title Saturday, and Calipari spoke postgame about what the win over the Gators can do for the Cats going forward.

After a sixth straight win in Gainesville — and a 10th win in the past 11 games overall against Florida — Calipari spoke to reporters about everything from Bradshaw and Wagner’s breakout second half showings, to what impressed him most about the win.

Here’s everything Calipari said postgame.

Kentucky head coach John Calipari celebrates during Saturday’s game against Florida.

Question about what changed for Kentucky in the second half of the game and if UK had to adjust to Florida’s physicality.

I thought the players changed. I let Orlando do most of the coaching in the first half and I said all right that’s enough (laughter).

They had 20 3-point shots. We gave them two breakaway layups because we just threw it away, and they banked two 3s. And we gave them so many open 3s they’re going to make them.

So our thing in the second half was, ‘We’re not doing that.’ That’s not who we are. And the guys locked down defensively and they played.

I thought D.J. Wagner was as good, you know and he played for us. Had one turnover. He and Tre (Mitchell), I told the team. Well, there’s two things. At halftime I just said, ‘Guys, we’re down four baskets. And we played that way?’ And we gave this, and we gave that. We’re fine.

But as we’re playing the second half I just said ‘Guys, just so you know, Tre and D.J. will only sub when they feel like coming out. Well, then Tre cramped up, couldn’t play anymore. And then Robert (Dillingham) played awful, but I told him ‘I believe in you. Just make easy plays.’ Quit trying to make the hardest play possible. And I put him back in and they were saying sub him and I said, ‘No.’ I’m leaving him in.’ I told him, ‘I’m leaving you in because I believe in you.’

And then the same with Aaron in the first half. He got muscled. He got manhandled. Couldn’t come up with a ball, couldn’t make a layup. He started that way in the second half and I said, ‘I’m not going to play you.’ And then we played him and ran an out-of-bounds play for him to get a shot and I said, ‘That’s how much I believe in you. I can’t fight for you.’

And (Florida) is good. Let me just say I watched all the tape and they can really shoot, they play as fast as we play, if not faster. In the first half they beat us up the court. We never got matched down. In the second half, we did. And they get 16 offensive rebounds a game. Today they got 11...

We had nine turnovers, and we had seven in the first half. Well, that’s not who we are. We’re like one of the lowest in the country, but we had one guy (Dillingham) have four. They all look good, except when they were layups for the other team.

So we’ve got work to do. (UK radio broadcaster Tom Leach) told me we had five freshmen in there at one point in this game, in this building, when (Florida) is playing out of their minds. How about, where did you think this was going when we missed two front-end one-and-one (free throws) back-to-back. That just tells you this team never... I don’t care that they’re young. They’re dogs. They have a will to win. They were playing to win the game.

And that’s why I wanted Robert in at the end, offensively. Because I knew he would play to win the game because that’s his mentality. Aaron’s 3 at the top, I mean he does it in practice. He’s done it in one game we played where he made a 3 and that’s why we ran that high ball screen, threw it back to him. The kid had the courage to make it.

The thing I would say, when you’re playing bad, the past couple years if a guy played bad, he just was bad the whole game. Just how it was. He would go 1-for-15. This team, the good news is if you’re not playing great I can sub you (and) it doesn’t hurt us that much, your play. And I told these guys a thousand times that: You don’t have to be great every moment you’re playing. We have enough guys now. We’ll just sub and be ready for the next sub or the next game.

This is where you find out where you are right now. And pleased for our guys, but then this flips around and we play again on Tuesday. Are you kidding me? We’ve got two a week now.

Question about Kentucky shooting poorly on 3s and having more turnovers than assists, but still winning.

A couple guys. We have one or two guys with a will to win and you make sure they’re in the game, how about that, like, coaching genius?

Leaving those guys in and let them do it. John Wall hit me yesterday and said, ‘Let them play loose and just make sure they know the team’s better so they may have to have the next play. But let them play.’ We’re playing random, but I’ll be honest with you, so was Florida. A lot of their stuff is random and they’re going to win a lot of games.

I watched them, like even Baylor, they could have beat Baylor, they could have beat Wake (Forest). They could be undefeated. They’re good. And the biggest thing they have that most teams in college don’t have right now is size. If they had played us earlier in the season when we didn’t have any of our bigs, we couldn’t have won this game. No way. Now we have some bigs, we have our 7-foot-2 guys now.

Question about what Calipari learned about his Kentucky team from this game.

That they can get themselves changed within a game. That’s hard now. You start playing bad, and you flip it around, within the game, now that means you’re a five-star player. Because you’ve lived it... It’s hard to flip it. You play bad (and you think), ‘I’m bad this game.’

We had a bunch of guys out there that struggled, and we figured out a way to win, made shots. What did we shoot from 3 in the second half? 40%, which is what we normally shoot.

(Calipari discusses game statistics with media members.)

And I expected (Florida) to play well and I told the team they’re going to make every shot, we’ve got to go over these pick-and-rolls, we’ve got to go over dribble handoffs. If you go under, they may have missed them against Baylor, they’re not missing them on this court and they didn’t.

We left people… One of our guards didn’t run back for about six stretches. I’m not saying it was one guard, it was one of our guards. So our 4 ended up having to guard a guard. And now we’re out of whack right to start and then they drove and played the way they played.

I’ll just say it again, Florida is really good. We got lucky. I’m happy we won the game. I’m happy for our team, but I imagine they’re looking forward to coming to Lexington.

Question about staying close to Florida rebounding-wise, without Adou Thiero playing.

Aaron didn’t bring in balls, you know what I’m saying? We showed signs of we’re not doing the things we need to do. Now you could imagine after giving up 24 offensive rebounds last game that what did we do for five days? Yeah, we rebounded. Because I knew that transition defense and that rebounding would be the game, and better in the second half, and basically folks we gave ourselves a chance to win by playing that way in the second half and then we won.

We could have lost. And I’d be up here saying, ‘Eh, we’ll learn from it and move on.’ But that’s what we did, we didn’t come down here and bury them? How much did we lead in this game? (5:25 of game time).

So, but I appreciate it. Happy New Year to everybody.