Kentucky begins its quest for an eighth NCAA basketball championship on Thursday and the most important weapon in their arsenal could be nothing more than a smile.
"When they watch my team play in this tournament, I want them to say, 'Kentucky has more fun playing than any team in the tournament.' Then I've done my job," UK coach John Calipari said Monday. "But the only way you can have that is to have an intensity level that's off the charts. We have the camaraderie. They do look after each other. They do execute. They do play off of one another. But there's got to be a little bit more. There's got to be a little bit more than we're doing.
"Everything we've done has been gearing toward this run of games, but we've got to keep them in the moment," Calipari added. "The focus now will be this weekend and being in a better frame of mind, including me and our coaching staff. It's all of us getting back to, 'All right, let's have a ball. Let's go do this.'"
And just what does Calipari mean by "better frame of mind?"
"If you have to fight these guys now to get them to really compete at that high level, you're not going to advance in this tournament," Calipari said. "I've done it many, many times."
The crux for the coach's comments is the Southeastern Conference Tournament in New Orleans. Kentucky was good, but not great. The Cats defeated LSU and Florida, but never had a double-digit lead in either game. Then UK lost Sunday's final when they ice cold down the stretch, appearing to tire at the end of three games in three days.
"What I told my team last night was, I'm going to chalk it up to we didn't have any gas in the tank,'" Calipari said. "We missed shots late in that game those last four or five minutes we haven't missed all year. But the biggest point of this is, I was dragging the guys across the finish line, and they've got to drag me across the finish line and that means that we all have to have more fun with this."
It will be interesting to see how Kentucky responds after having its 25-game win streak snapped just as the Cats begin NCAA Tournament play.
"We could all say that, 'Hey, I would have rather won the game,' but in another sense I'm saying, 'We don't want anything hanging on us.'" Calipari said. "I think everything that needs to be said has been said about us and me personally. So now we can just go play ball. All the stuff – let's just go play.
"It's game to game, don't get beyond," the coach added. "Don't feel this: 'We have to win this tournament.' No. What we do is, let's just worry about playing well and everything else will take care of itself. Let's worry about playing well. Let's worry about playing harder than the opponent. Those kind of things."
Kentucky, the overall No. 1 seed, opens NCAA play Thursday against the Western Kentucky-Mississippi Valley State winner.
"We have a team that has a little bit of everything," Calipari said. "Just going to have to fight and understand that nothing in this tournament is given to anyone. Every game, you must play and every game is a competitive game. If you think the other team's going to be intimidated, you're crazy and you're going to get knocked out quickly.
"There's nothing there for us except let's play well and let's worry about just getting better," Calipari added. "We've got three weeks to say let's make some incremental increases in different areas. We do that, we'll be fine."
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