Feb. 27, 2016
Recap | Box Score | Notes | USATSI Photos 
| Howell’s Photos
Vanderbilt 74 Kentucky 62
February 27, 2016
Vanderbilt Head Coach Kevin Stallings
Opening statement:
“Well, that was a good game. I’m proud of my team, proud of how hard we played. They’re obviously a very good basketball team. We were fortunate because [Tyler] Ulis didn’t have his usual shooting kind of day, but hopefully some of that had to do with defense. I thought we did a little better job on [Jamal] Murray in the second half, but he was fantastic, gosh, fantastic. I thought we hung in there, I thought we fought and battled, which is what you have to do. I thought our second half defense was really, really, really strong, and it’s been, honestly, very weak most of the season. We’ve been pretty good defensively in the first half, not very good in the second. We were much better in the second half today, fortunately, and we needed to be, so we’re happy to get this win.”
On Jeff Roberson’s basket with 1:27 to go:
“Jeff made some big plays for us all day long, and Jeff’s been playing great basketball for us. I’m very happy for him, there’s not a better, more committed team guy in our locker room than Jeff Roberson. He does things quietly and without a whole lot of fanfare but he’s turned into a very effective player.”
On leaving Jeff Roberson and Damian Jones in with three fouls early in the second half:
“Obviously I didn’t want them to pick up their fourth. I told them that, if it came to it, I’d rather them give up a basket than get a foul. They played intelligently the rest of the way, which I was proud of. But they weren’t guarding the guys that shoot the most free throws for them, that draw the most fouls. That had something to do with it, too. If [Alex] Poythress had been in the game a lot and Damian would’ve been stuck there, with Poythress going at him a lot, then that might’ve changed my thinking a little bit, but we had Poythress in a little foul trouble too.”
On the lack of bench scoring in the game for both teams:
“Very [unusual]. That’s hard to explain, I don’t even know how to explain that.”
On going to shake John Calipari’s hand as the students storm the court:
“It wasn’t really a sense of satisfaction at that point. I’m not a big fan of storming the court, and I’m not a big fan of opposing players being put at some risk and having somebody run into them. I saw what Cal was trying to do, he was trying to get his team out, which I understood and appreciated. I wanted to get over and shake his hand real quickly and almost be in a position to where, if I had to be helpful to him with his players, I could be. So he was able to get his guys out, and that was good.”
On the excitement of court storming:
“Absolutely. I wish the students could just wait until Kentucky cleared the floor and then they could storm the court, that’s what I wish. Don’t get me wrong, I’m excited that they’re excited, but I think those of you that know me know that I’m about sportsmanship and I don’t want somebody on their team getting into a bad spot because of somebody from our side.”
On if this game puts his team into the NCAA Tournament:
“If we lose the rest of our games, probably not. I don’t know. It’s not hard for me to downplay it because I don’t think that this win gets us, it probably doesn’t guarantee us anything. I don’t know, I’m not in the selection room, I’m not with the committee, I don’t care. I just want us to play well, play as a team, and play like we have one agenda. Then, when they put it all together in the selection room, if we get called then I’ll be really, really happy and, if we don’t, I’ll be really, really sad. I didn’t look at this game like, this gets us in the tournament or, if we hadn’t have won it, it wouldn’t get us in the tournament. You can’t really look at games like that and, for me, we’ve got to play Tennessee on Tuesday now. A few more hours of this and Kentucky will be in the rear view mirror and we’ve got to get ready to play Tennessee. It’s like I told the team in the locker room after the game, if they gave us two wins for this, then I would put more emphasis on it, but they don’t, they only give us one win for it so it’s no more or less important than the one we have on Tuesday.
On if the last two games were his team’s two best of the season at the right time:
“Yeah, and you can throw in the way that we played against Georgia, so three in a row. For that matter, you can throw in the way we played against Mississippi State, with the exception of about five minutes. They’ve been doing pretty well, they’re not quite as bad a team as people thought, not me people, but other people. We’re playing better and it’s a good team to be playing better.”
On game planning to stop Jamal Murray, who scored 33 points for Kentucky:
“I think we started switching people on him because, by design, they’re running him around a bunch of stuff to get his defender tired. Then his defender gets tired and he busts open and he’s unbelievable. So we started switching people, changing it up with Wade [Baldwin], with Jeff [Roberson], with Matt[hew Fisher-Davis], switching out on him sometimes. I think that helped us slow him down a tad. We didn’t slow him down a whole lot, he had 33, just slow him down just enough.”
Vanderbilt Guard Matthew Fisher-Davis
On breaking away at the end of the game:
“We finally got stops. With separation from other teams, we know they can score the ball, so it’s all about the defense.”
On what this game means:
“It was just another win for us. Going forward, we’re trying to get ready for Tennessee next week. It was a lot of fun, but we have to put things in perspective. We have another game on Tuesday.”
On if they’re playing their best basketball right now:
“We’re just trying to take it one day at a time, trying to get better, and I feel like we did.”
On playing under pressure:
“Coach Stallings has been telling both of us to be more aggressive, especially defensively, once we’re locked in down there the offense just comes.”
On outfighting Kentucky:
“I really think we did. We knew coming in that to beat Kentucky you have to beat their mentality. We had the pieces coming in, we could beat anyone in the country if we feel like it, we just played hard and came out with the victory.”
On their first Kentucky win since he’s been here:
“It felt different. Kentucky has pretty much been the standard in college basketball. It’s a great feeling.”
On the atmosphere:
“It was great. The fans were loud and great and into it the entire game. There were times we were tired out there, and they gave us the energy to keep pushing forward. I think their energy helped to wear down Kentucky. I didn’t even hear people who were wearing blue.”
Vanderbilt Forward Jeff Roberson
On beating the shot clock late in the second half:
“I knew at the end of the shot clock that we needed a bucket, so I just tried to make something happen. I floated it, it went in. At the time I didn’t really know that it was that big of a shot, it was just a matter of trying to get something up and getting back on defense.”
On getting three fouls early in the second half:
“It was just a matter of being smarter, being aggressive but not too aggressive, just keeping my hands up and trying not to get a foul.”
On the previous negativity surrounding the team:
“We always try to keep it in the locker room. There will always be something to say, good or bad, but as long as we stay together, what we say is what matters. I don’t really want to think that the negativity has really affected us, we really just need to stay together and focus on each other at the end of the day.”
On if they feel like a tournament team:
“I feel like we deserve it. Internally in the locker room we still feel like we will be an NCAA tournament team, no matter what the struggles were during the season, no matter the doubt, we always had the same goal and it never changed. We just kept working at it.”
On what they found over the last three games:
“We found consistency. Even last year we talked about playing our best ball towards the end of the year, and now we’re getting towards that point. It’s about building every day.”
On wearing down Kentucky:
“It seemed like we did. It was about the defense, just getting consecutive stops and getting the crowd into it. We had multiple things to worry about, and once they got tired we took advantage of it.”
On their first Kentucky win since he’s been here:
“Yeah it felt good, especially since they’re at the top of the conference. It was a good win for us.”
Kentucky Head Coach John Calipari
On the bigs lack of contribution:
“I don’t think they contributed anything…why? I don’t know, you’ll have to ask them. Look, I like to win every game I coach. Tyler had a tough look and couldn’t make a shot. How are we going to win when he’s not making them? It’s the first dud he’s had. When I say dud, he had six assists and one turnover. What I said to them after the game, is as bad as it was, guys fouled themselves out. We took a quick three in transition and we should have driven the ball and drawn a foul. We get the game to four, Skal has the ball in the middle of the lane. The next play, Tyler has a layup, the next play, Tyler has a shot and doesn’t take it, throws it to Isaiah. Isaiah misses, you just lost the game on those plays.”
“They shot 43, so it’s not like they shot 55 percent. But, they made the fouls. Give them credit, Vanderbilt played well. Just think of this. Jamal carried us, pretty much the whole game, and… that was it. That’s why I’m not crazy right now.”
“The game got rough. Either you relish that or you run from that, I don’t know. They’re great kids and terrific players.”
On the absence of Derek Willis:
“It probably hurt us, but again, if he’s not fighting and rebounding and doing stuff for us, if you watch the game against them last time, he was not a factor. He made one jump shot.”
On Vanderbilt’s momentum:
“They’ve won 5 of 6. You know, A&M struggled a little bit, we’ve struggled a little bit, but I can go around the country and tell you 15 teams that during their season who have struggled. This is a different year. They’re an NCAA Tournament team.”
On if Tyler Ulis was fatigued:
“I went in to talk to the guys about practice and I was trying to back him off of practice. He said `Don’t do that,’ because I did it for a couple of days. He said `It’ll screw me up, let’s go up and down.’ In this game I could have subbed him at a couple of different points but we couldn’t ever get a gap and I don’t feel comfortable with who I had in the game. I was just trying to get out of there. We’ve got this week. We’ve got two games. Regular season is over. We’ve got some time and then we go into the tournament. He’s fine. He just had a bad shooting night. He’s had bad shooting nights but just not that bad. Again, he even missed two free throws. And then we have a guy go 0-4, another guy 0-2, another guy go 0-4. You go 0-10 and expect to win a basketball game?! Can I say this–badly misses. Demoralizing misses. Like, dudes, we play basketball, this is what we do. It is what it is right now.”
On front court play:
“Their front court players were better than ours today, now they weren’t when they played us in Lexington. I wish I had the answer, but I don’t. Our bigs were better than their bigs at our place and their bigs were better than ours here, and took it right at us and we did not fight back.”
On a `my fault’ play:
“If this were the NCAA Tournament, it would have ended on a `my fault’. We’re a young team, these are learning experiences. We’re going home, we’ve got two days, we play on Tuesday.”
On how to improve:
“We just gotta be the best version of ourselves…this was like an NCAA Tournament game and it’s like some guys just didn’t ring the bell. Now you become a little worried. Can they ring the bell?”
Kentucky Guard Jamal Murray
On the first half:
“I was hot, I was taking shots. Finding openings and playing off of guys. They found me and I was able to take shots. Being up by three at half time says a lot. As a team we had to stop them from scoring.”
On being fatigued:
“We were trying to play hard. Guys were going out quick in foul trouble. Going out on the court, it was a face-paced game. I called for a sub a couple times, but that wasn’t really a problem. The problem for us was playing defense and executing offense.”
On Head Coach John Calipari changing the game plan for today:
“He changed a couple things and modified a couple plays, but nothing permanent. Just trying to give the team different looks and trying to see how they handle it. A couple worked and a couple didn’t, so we’ll learn from it.”
On what went wrong:
“We weren’t on point. We weren’t sharp coming into the game. Guys were just kind of lingering. We looked fatigued, and that should be no issue, but it looked like an issue today. [Vanderbilt] went on a run that we didn’t stop, didn’t get some rebounds, missed some open shots and point-blank shots. Like I said, we’ve got to learn from it and move on.”
Kentucky Center Marcus Lee
On what went wrong for Kentucky:
“We can’t be in and out of the game, get into foul trouble, and totally zone out in the first half, and that’s something we did today. For us to be successful pick wise, the whole game.”
On why today was an off day:
“I have no idea why it was that way. We should have had it. Especially for Alex [Poythress] and I. We’re vets, so it falls on our shoulders to set an example and to lead.”
On how to improve group mentality:
“We’ve been working on it a lot, trying to set a basis as bigs. Coming up to this game, we were doing really well as bigs by battling and working really hard. We’ve been really focused, and today it just wasn’t our day as bigs. We’ve got to figure it out as quick as possibly and not let this be another setback.”
On the absence of Derek Willis:
“He’s a crucial part of our team. He brings something that a lot of the bigs can’t. He spreads the court out for Tyler and all our guards to get in the middle. It helps everything out, and we’re hoping he gets back soon.”