© Matt Bush | USATSI
Kentucky was up by 15 at halftime, but John Calipari knew Mississippi State wasn’t dead yet. He told his team he expected the Bulldogs to make two runs in the second half and he was right. Thankfully, the Cats survived them both — but just barely.
“Believe me, at halftime, I said, ‘They’ve got two runs in them,” Calipari said. “They’re going to come after us twice. We’ve got to withstand those two runs.’ That’s what I said at halftime. We withstood the first one at the start of the half when they were scoring every basket and we scored too.