“Honestly, getting better players each year and improving your talent and winning most of your games makes it more fun. But it doesn’t always. It can be pressure and all of a sudden it is a grind. If it is a grind for the coach, then it is a grind for the players and the fans. Your season will end because the players will want it to end. Our teams have played well in March because they want to keep playing and are having fun. We block out everybody else.”
“I don’t listen to talk radio. If someone gets on there and thinks they are jabbing me, I don’t listen to it. I don’t know what is on a chat room. I don’t know how to get in there. I can turn on a computer. That’s the extent of it. You are not going to bug me in a chat room because I never see it.
“I am not going to read the local paper whether it’s good or bad. If they write the good and it pumps you up, that’s not good either. Ego — edging God out — is not good. Or when they rip you to shreds and call you the devil — and I am not the devil. I am a basketball coach. Either one is not good to deal with. I go about my business and treat my players the way I want my son to be treated. I try to coach them up, make them feel good and try to recruit good players. That’s what I have always done and will keep doing.”
Farmer played under Rick Pitino when he was rebuilding the UK basketball fortunes. Now Farmer senses the same drive, passion and optimism from Calipari.
“He brings is an exciting style of basketball, which is something people got accustomed to under coach Pitino. If that is accompanied by wins, people are going to be so excited again,” Farmer said.
“You can be the greatest coach in the world and if you do not have players on the floor, you are not going to win games. Just look at what he has done in his career and it is obvious he is one of the best recruiters out there. I predict that tickets are going to be at a premium again and Kentucky basketball is going to be back where we all want it to be very, very soon now that we have John Calipari here.”
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