ATLANTA — Kentucky head coach John Calipari didn't mince words when asked for his thoughts in a halftime television interview.

"They're flopping all over the place," Calipari said of Duke's defense. "In the NBA, they'd all be suspended."

When Duke head coach Mike Krzyzewski was told of Calipari's comments after the game, he gave a tongue-and-cheek response the drew a few chuckles from the media assembled at the press conference.

"I mean, he has a right to say whatever he wants," Krzyzewski said. "I thought we took some amazing charges, and I thought we probably could have taken a couple more. There’s a difference between a charge and a flop. A flop means you don’t take any contact. I would hope that anyone who watches the game would say that our kids really played outstanding defense and were there to take charges.

"And we don’t make any money, so we can’t be fined."

A few minutes later, when asked about how Ryan Harrow's absence with flu-like symptons affected Kentucky, Krzyzewski offered this response:

"John wants to talk about our defense, I’ll let him talk about his team and not me."

Calipari, whose No. 3 Wildcats lost to No. 9 Duke 75-68, followed Krzyzewski at the podium. When he was asked about his halftime comments by a reporter for the Duke student newspaper, The Chronicle, he interrupted the question.

"Who did? What are you saying?"

"You made some comments," Tom Gieryn, The Chronicle reporter, said.

"I did?" Calipari said. "I don't even remember, what did I say?"

"it was a joke," Calipari said. "Come on, you guys at Duke can take a joke, right? Geez."