“Immanuel (Quickley) is
not even the same player,”
Calipari said. “I had someone come in and watch
us practice and say, ‘he’s not even the same
guy.’ … Immanuel seems to be that guy
right now. Now he’s building his own
confi dence. I can’t give him confi dence. I can
help him gain confi dence; he’s got to build it
himself. Then you got to get into games and you
got to have demonstrated performance. You got
to do something in the games that convinces you,
not me, that I got this. So but he’s done great.”
Calipari said Quickley’s emergence is similar to
PJ Washington’s development last season.
“The reason is he’s in a different frame of mind. It’s
kind of like when PJ (Washington) came back,”
Calipari said. “PJ came back; it’s not that he just
came back, he came back with a different
mentality. He came back with a change of how
he responded and how he saw things.”
While Hagans and Quickley do have experience,
Calipari has enough guards to piece together a
three-guard offense.
“This year I think we have three guys that easily
could play point guard (and) there may be times
that all three of them play at one time,” he said.
“I’ve done that before when we had Jamal
(Murray), Isaiah (Briscoe) and Tyler (Ulis).
We played three point guards. And your teams,
there’s things you give up but there’s things
you gain. But when you have more than one,
something happens, whether it’s foul trouble,
injuries or anything else, you have room,
because you have more than one.”
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