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John Calipari reveals he had no idea about win No. 400: ‘I’m not doing this for numbers’
By Keith Farner
Published:
John Calipari celebrated win No. 400 at Kentucky on Wednesday night as the Wildcats dispatched of Mississippi State in Rupp Arena.
Antonio Reeves scored a game-high 27 points as No. 8 Kentucky beat Mississippi State 90-77.
Calipari’s record at UK is now 400-116.
“Their player came up to me and said, ‘Congratulations on 400,’ and I go, ‘Oh, gee, I forgot about it,'” Calipari said in the post-game press conference. “One of their players. My players, they didn’t have any idea. They just want to know what we’re eating, we have food back here? All I would say to you is you stay long enough and you have enough really good players, a lot of those things happen. I’m not doing this for numbers. Don’t even know what my record is, I could care less.”
Then Calipari explained his approach to coaching.
“But you can see I’m locked into how I can help these players,” he said. “Some of it is, you help them by putting them on the bench and just sit them, that’s how you help them. Other times, you’ve got to hug them. Or giving them books for positive thinking, different things to get them to think different. You’re trying to teach them habits because their dominant habits are not real good, when you’re 19 and 20, they’re just not good. And then every day is a battle of push and pull, and that kind of stuff happens.”
A former newspaper veteran, Keith Farner is a news manager for Saturday Down South.
