ST. LOUIS — What did Kentucky have to say about Iowa State during Saturday’s media availability at the Enterprise Center?
Plenty — and read on to find out (below). The second-seeded Cyclones (28-7) face the seventh-seeded Wildcats (22-13) at 1:45 p.m. Sunday in the second round of the NCAA Tournament. CBS will broadcast the game.
KENTUCKY HEAD COACH MARK POPE
On ISU in general …
“We’re excited to have a shot at playing tomorrow again. This is a terrific team that we get to play. It’s going to be a great battle, a big-time win last night. I have known T.J. for a long time. He does an unbelievable job. Should be a great game.”
On Milan Momcilovic …
“Yeah. He’s put up staggering numbers. I think it’s close to 250 threes on the season. Shoots 50 percent. It’s really, really impressive. Just gotta put him in verified. I don’t know where he stands with anybody else in the country. They earn him a lot of shots with their pace. They earn him shots with actions. He earns himself shots by being an elite level screener and a relocator. So it’s gotta be a little bit of a team effort. Of course all the guys have match-up assignments, but also the communication needs to be key. Us being solid in ball protection is going to be the key. Us being good on the glass is going to be a key because he’s so focused on earning threes off offensive rebounds and off cuts and in transition. It’ll be a team effort.”
On Joshua Jefferson’s health status …
“Yeah. We’ll prepare as if he’s playing. You go through this throughout the season where you’re kind of prepared for multiple potential opponents. The great thing about Iowa State, and I think what T.J. has done so masterfully at Iowa State is they have such an engrained identity of who they are. Clearly, Jefferson is a massive key to what they do. And so understand, I would — like he’s a special, special player, but Iowa State is going to be Iowa State whoever T.J. rolls out on the court. He could probably go grab five guys from the rec center and give them a week and they would come out there and just be an incredibly intense defensive juggernaut that was finding ways to score in big ways.”
On the Cyclones’ ability to “impose their will” …
Yeah. We’re big believers in you want to meet force with force everywhere you can. And it’s back to the simple idea of if you’re trying to protect the ball, you protect the ball by being more aggressive and more decisive and more forceful rather than actually thinking about protect the ball, right? When you want to make a play for your teammates, you think about, like, getting downhill and getting to two feet and being vicious more than you do about just making a quick, easy play and a pass. So when you play great teams like this team, it’s all about being as aggressive as you can with some intelligence, right? And staying in character. Being aggressive within your own character. And those are kind of high-level concepts without getting into specifics. But in a general sense, it’s going to be where this game has gotta be played for us to be successful.”
On dealing with Momcilovic’s size as a top 3-point shooter …
“Yeah. So you have to hit him in a bunch of different ways. You’d like to be there where he doesn’t get any rhythm. Like, you’d like to take away his rhythm as much as you can.
One of the things that’s probably under-appreciated about him is how physical he is. He owns his line coming off screens, and that’s hard to do in this game, especially with how physical the game is right now. But he’s gotta be able to maintain his line coming off screens. He gets shoulder to shoulder on screens. So any chance you have to kind of disrupt his flow is going to be really, really important.
Can you play with him a little bit on the carry? He’s got this really brilliant kind of dark fade where he likes to play that’s really hard to get to. So you just want to be as disruptive as you can. You want to find ways to contest as a second jumper, contest his shots the best you can. You’d like to find ways to attack him on the offensive end a little bit, which is hard to do with this team because they’re such a fundamentally team-concepted defense. But anytime you can bring a little bit of discomfort, it’ll serve you as well.”
KENTUCKY GUARD COLLIN CHANDLER
On knowing Joshua Jefferson well from the AAU circuit …
“We played a lot together in camps. So I got to know him and he’s a tough kid (they’re both 22), so I don’t know what his status is, but he’s a player. … They’re still tough. They played a really tough game (Friday). They were really good even after he left the game. That’s not something that brings immense comfort. … We met up in camps every once in a while. He’s from the West coast, I’m from the West coast so we’d meet up a all the time and for some reason I feel like we were on the same team a lot. Yeah, I just know he’s a player and he’s killed it since being in college.”
Could you have seen him becoming a consensus All-American?
“I mean, he’s always been a player. You never really know, but he’s grown into a role and being really good at that role. He kind of does a little bit of everything, which makes him hard to guard, and what makes him so good is he does everything, right? So just props to him for what he’s doing.”
KENTUCKY GUARD OTEGA OWEH
On how Iowa State impresses him …
“Just how physical they are. The intensity they play with.”
How can they handle the Cyclones’ ball pressure?
“Just got to be physical with the ball. Don’t let them take our ball and then being super aggressive when we make plays.”
KENTUCKY FORWARD ANDRIJA JELAVIC
On Iowa State forcing turnovers …
“That’s what they do to most teams. That’s how they win. They score, like, 20-25 points just off the opponents’ turnovers, so if you take that way from them, I feel like you have a very good shot at winning, so we just need to distribute the ball early. Don’t complicate too much, just pass to the next free teammate, and, of course, make shots off that.”
How do you simulate it in practice?
“We were practicing today and when the guard gets the ball, two of our GA’s would go at him and try to take the ball away, and he just needs to pass to the big or the next guard quickly, and then you have a 4-on-3 situation, on 2-on-1 situation. … They want us to go one-on-one so they can tighten their defense, get two or three guys on the ball and make you turn it over. Then they’re off in transition, so we just need to distribute the ball very well, pass it around to each other and take open shots, take the best shots, take the best shots we can.”
