ESPN’s GameDay can distract home team, Calipari says after Kentucky’s 80-62 win over KU
Kentucky’s John Calipari was asked, after Saturday’s 18-point blowout victory over Kansas, if he’s ever experienced a bigger road victory in his Hall of Fame coaching career.
Remember, Kentucky’s 80-62 win came in a building in which the Jayhawks have dropped just 16 games in 19 years.
“Look, I don’t even know who we played two weeks ago to be honest with you,” Calipari said after his No. 12-ranked Wildcats (17-4) rolled to a 20-point halftime lead and led by as many as 24 points over the No. 5-ranked Jayhawks (17-3).
“But let me just say this,” Calipari quickly added, “we’ve won a lot of games. We’ve won a lot of games against ranked teams. We’ve done it all kind of different ways. The one thing I told these guys (today): ‘I’ve done this a long time,’ and I said (to them), ‘I’ve been in many of these games on the road where it’s GameDay.’’’
He was referring ESPN GameDay in which the network crew holds an hour-long morning show in the fieldhouse/arena of the home team, with thousands of fans and maybe a few of the home team players watching the proceedings.
On Saturday morning, KU’s Ochai Agbaji and Bill Self were interviewed by the GameDay crew during the 10 a.m. to 11 a.m. telecast, while David McCormack and Mitch Lightfoot were called on to shoot halfcourt shots.
“All the pressure is on the other team,” Calipari noted of games with GameDay in town. “I can remember going to Gonzaga when I was at Memphis: GameDay at Gonzaga. Everything is on that other team. ‘If you play for 40 minutes,’ I told ‘em (Kentucky players), ‘You watch what happens.’
“It’s a hard deal,” he added of GameDay on the home team players. “You are supposed to win. You got GameDay. Everybody’s jacked up. The kids feel it. Again they are not machines. They are not robots. They are kids.”
Calipari was asked about the performance of Keion Brooks, Kentucky’s junior forward who scored a career-high 27 points on 9-of-16 shooting. Brooks was 9 of 10 from the line and had eight rebounds.
“Please don’t say, ‘27 points.’ He rebounded. He played tough,” Calipari said after Kentucky won for just the second time in its last six games versus KU. “He defended. He came off weak side on the lob and tipped it away. He was switching and then he made shots. What if he missed four or five shots. That’s OK, do all that other stuff. I was proud of him,” Calipari added.
Kentucky big man Oscar Tshiebwe, who scored 17 points on 8-of-13 shooting with 14 rebounds, praised Brooks after the game.
“I’m so proud of him for what he did tonight. He helped us win this game. The way he came out tonight was unbelievable,” Tshiebwe said. “I’m so proud of him, and I want him to keep coming like that every night. That’s how we are going to be a top team.”
Of opponents focusing on him instead of Brooks, Tshiebwe said: “I think for me, they paid too much attention to me and now they forget about him, so I keep doing my job like coach says, keep backing in and post up because when you post up they focus on you and that leaves someone else open like Keion was open today like 100 times.”
Defensively, Kentucky held Kansas’ Ochai Agbaji to three points the first half in building a 51-31 lead. Agbaji finished with 13 points on 4-of-14 shooting.
“It was a team effort,” Calipari said. “The way they are playing, you can see they (Jayhawks) are playing dribble drive with four guys on the perimeter like we do. You have to switch some. We switched off on him and that guy guarded him too. It’s a team effort.”
This story was originally published January 29, 2022 at 10:05 PM with the headline "ESPN’s GameDay can distract home team, Calipari says after Kentucky’s 80-62 win over KU."
