By LARRY VAUGHT

Senior guard Julius Mays is becoming the go-to player for insightful quotes on this season and he delivered again Friday.

“I think we are a step or two away, just by being able to get a team down and bury them. We haven’t got there yet, but we have made a lot of improvements and strides. We are getting better every day,” Mays said. “I felt like everybody had it in their head that we had so much to live up to. My main thing was that we are our own team; we are not last year’s team.

“Last year’s team did something amazing and there are a few people that can come out and do that. I felt that guys had high expectations for themselves and it only set us back instead of letting us be as good as we were. We lost the swagger that we had once we dropped a game and another game. Then, everybody started feeling like we weren’t as good as we could be. That just set us back, the mental aspect of it.”

He says players now realize this is a new year with no preset expectations.

“I don’t think there are any expectations. I think we control our own fate. I think we can do what we want to do. I feel like we have the talent on this team to take it anywhere, to make a deep run in March,” Mays said. “Obviously your outsiders are going to have expectations, but like I said you shouldn’t pay attention to what they say.”

“I think he (John Calipari) tries to put a lot more responsibility on us, not so much on himself. There is no excuse for
us to say ‘oh he’s doing this, or oh he’s doing that.’ I think he tries to put it in our hands and take it out of his.”