Here's a transcript of Kentucky coach John Calipari's quotes about Princeton from this afternoon's press conference.
Q. Nobody has mentioned Princeton yet. Nobody knows anything about them outside the Ivy League probably and all the Kentucky fans likely are booking their tickets to New York or looking ahead to West Virginia. How do you prepare your team and prepare them for Princeton?
COACH CALIPARI: Well, what we do all the time, we don't show them much tape of anybody we play. They'll see tape at the meal prior to the game. They don't get a scouting report. That's all season. They never get a scouting report. Whatever they get, it's from us. I'm worried about my team.
Princeton can beat us. They can beat just about anybody. They shoot it, they're long. I'll bet Princeton is bigger than we are. They've got more size than we do. Their guard play is outstanding. Their best player comes off the bench, I don't know why, their senior, and he's really good, and people are going to find that out.
But again, I worry about our team and what we have to do, or at least get my players to. I'm watching all the tape. My head is spinning with Princeton right now. But I don't want my team's heads spinning. I want them to worry about us. If we're not good enough to beat them playing as well as we can play, then they move on and we don't.
Q. As somewhat of a follow-up to that, do you see similarities between this Princeton team and the Cornell team you saw last year?
COACH CALIPARI: Yeah, they do not run -- I've coached against Coach Carril. They're not the Princeton -- strictly Princeton, you know spin dribbles, double back doors, chin action. They're not -- they have the chin action, they do the back doors, but they do it to their strength, which is back doors to post-ups, back doors to isos, three-point shooters coming off stagers. They're doing different things. They're scoring 70 points a game. In a Princeton offense to score 70 points that means you're playing faster than a normal Princeton. So I think it's the coach's own stamp, and I think a lot of it comes from John Thompson, the way he did it, which is his own version of Princeton. I think this is how this team is playing. They're good, they're very good, and they shoot it, which is scary.
Q. To sort of follow up on that, you're sort of the signature program for the drible drive program. Princeton is obviously the signature program for the Princeton offense. Can you talk about what those systems have done for the way that basketball is played in this era and what's the best way to match up with a Princeton offense team?
COACH CALIPARI: You know what, after dribble drive motion, they have -- it's Princeton on steroids is what I say, and we're trying to get the back doors, we're trying to create great space, we're trying to create threes, we're trying to attack the rim. But instead of on the pass and the spin and the back door, we're doing it on the dribble basically is what I said.
This team, we're having to do it a little different. As a matter of fact, we're running some Princeton stuff. And why? Because we need space to do our dribble drive. So when you see us in a handoff, a back door, my gosh, they're running Princeton. Yeah, we're running a little bit of it to get us space to run our driving motion. But to guard Princeton, they're going to get back doors.
We played Princeton when I was at UMass, and they put the sky cam over the top of the court so that you could see all the back doors and you could see it developing. I was like the Washington Generals for Coach Carril so the country could see his back doors and all the other stuff. But it's hard to guard, it's really hard to guard. And what they try to get you to do is overreact to things or overpressure or come out and go crazy, and all of a sudden they're spaced out above the foul line and they're getting backdoor lay-ups.
But this team, they're dangerous because they play faster. They'll pull up on the break and the guard will shoot a 25-foot jumper and it'll go. They'll put themselves in pick-and-rolls and handoffs where their guards can get to the rim. They're a good team, a very good team.
