Arkansas fell to Tennessee 76-52 in its SEC opener on Saturday afternoon at a sold out Thompson-Boling Arena at Food City Center in Knoxville.
The Vols dominated Arkansas on the glass and led by double-digit points for the entire second half. Following the game, Arkansas head coach John Calipari discussed Tennessee manhandling the Razorbacks on the glass, Arkansas’ shooting struggles and much more. Here’s everything Calipari said.
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Opening Statement
“Yes, I’ve had better days. I’ll start. They’re the number one team in the country for a reason. And my disappointment wasn’t in coming to Tennessee and losing a game. It was they kind of manhandled us. I can’t remember the last time I had a team get beat by 30 rebounds (22). And so we got to do some soul searching, because this league, what they play like everybody plays like. So we miss free throws, we miss threes and we get out-rebounded by 30, aren’t you like, how did you only get beat by 25? It could have been 50. But hats off to Tennessee. They’re the number one team for a reason and they did it to us.”
On the rebounding disparity, 51-29, in favor of Tennessee
“Well first of all, we only had one guy go to try to offensive rebound. They had more offensive rebounds than we had rebounds. I want you to hear what I just said. How did we … all I kept saying in the second half, let’s get it to single digits. If we do something good, they get an offensive rebound. We do something good, they get an offensive rebound. We make it 13, they get two offensive rebounds, two threes. And you look around, like guys, it has nothing to do with anything but rebounding. If I play a smaller team, guards have got to rebound defensively. I don’t need you to offensive rebound, but defensively you got to come up with the ball. So we could play a bigger team with Adou (Thiero) at the three. But like I said, he didn’t play well today. He’s probably had one of those this year. So in 14 games, he’s had one other dud. He had it here, couldn’t make a free throw and then he shoots an air-ball three. That’s not who he is, but give (Tennessee) credit. They made him play that way.”
On what makes Tennessee different compared to last season
“They’re older. They’re a year older. And so you got the one, the transfer in (Igor Milicic), he helps them because you can stretch the floor a little bit. He’s pretty good and he hurt us rebounding. I think he had double digit rebounds, come on. I mean, who was guarding him? Or not blocking him out? Whoever it was. Some of it was, we went to help him, he just went to the glass. But that’s what we’re trying to do. We want to send three. If you watch the tape, we had one guy try to offensive rebound instead of a bunch of guys going in there and mixing it up. So we got work to do. We know we’re not as good as the No. 1 team in the country. In this league, I mean, every game you’re gonna play, it’s going to be a hard game. Every one.”
On what Tennessee did to hold them under 55 points
“Two things. They did a great job with our free throw shooting. We missed all kind of free throws. Second thing is, we had a bunch of good threes, good looks, and you miss them. Look, I say this all the time, you don’t have to make them all. Can’t miss them. You can’t miss them all. We missed every one that gave us a chance to get back. I mean, and some of them badly. But they’re physical. They were giving us one tough shot and if we created a good look,and we missed some of them, I looked at them and said, ‘guys, you’re not gonna make every shot.
Just keep playing. Fight.’ You got to learn to fight when you are not playing well. So this was a great learning experience for this team. And now there’s some soul searching. We’re off tomorrow. We’ll have some individual meetings on Monday. And like I’m not cracking. I’ve been through a lot of this now, not many games like this, but there have been games like this where we just got totally manhandled. I remember at South Carolina, they did it to us. We walk out of the game. We have no chance of winning, if that’s what we are. So they’re good. And it was a great crowd today. I thought they had no students. Maybe people wouldn’t show. Well, they all came. I think students came back early to be here to enjoy that.”
On where he feels the team’s level of physicality is at:
“Well, here’s what I would tell you. If you’re in there and you can’t rebound, you can’t be in. Don’t be mad at me. Don’t be mad at an assistant coach. Just rebound, or someone else has to play, and that means you’re going to have to go body to body. And I hate to tell you, we did it for three days. So you should say you better try something different. Because if you did all body to body stuff, we did all block out, the stings. We did block out drills — you ready? Don’t even rebound, just make sure your man doesn’t get it. That really worked.
“The one thing I would do different in this game, and all night, tossed and turn. We didn’t do a shootaround today, and I just felt our body time is noon. Pretty early. If I had to do it over again, we would have shot a shootaround, because we had three or four guys like, kind of no show. So basically, they slept, had breakfast. Never really — you know, you play this team, you better be coming in ready to fight. And I don’t mean fist fight, I mean battle. You better be first to the ball. You better be blocking out. You better run and get some free baskets, or it’s going to be a hard game for you. And we didn’t.”
