UK @ Georgia – Preview

Coming into a game with a two game winning streak for the first time since mid November should be reason enough for Kentucky to come into saturday’s game at the Georgia Bulldogs focused and ready to kick some butt. Kentucky has fallen into the lazy habit of playing down, although sometimes up, to their opponents’ skill level and that is unacceptable. Kentucky has only lossed two games by 15 or more so getting blown out by anybody in the Southeastern Conference will be tough but UK has lost numerous games against teams that really do not belong on the same court as the Wildcats and certaintly do not have any business beating them either. Kentucky could easily be coming into the game this Saturday afternoon with at least a record of 13-5 had they beaten the teams that they, on paper, should dominate. If the ‘Cats were 13-5 they would be a top 20 team, thanks to their two top 15 wins, and would be almost a lock for the NCAA tournament. Instead UK is looking at the tourney from the outside just hoping to get close enough to look in and they are one loss away from dropping below .500 on the season.

KEYS TO THE GAME

The first KEY TO THE GAME is simple, pressure the ball and force turnovers. Georgia is the only team in the SEC with a worse assist/turnover ratio than UK and Kentucky must certainly use that to their advantage Saturday. Every player on Georgia’s team except for two average more turnovers per game than assists and that is easily the worst in the league. Only one player for UGA averages more than 1.8 assists per game, so that probably means that the Bulldogs are not good decision makers, expect UK to trap and play some full court defense to try to force UGA to make some stupid mistakes that lead to easy baskets for the ‘Cats.

The second KEY TO THE GAME is also very simple, stop Sundiata Gaines. Gaines tourched the Wildcats last year in Athens during the upset of Kentucky with 19 points, 6 rebounds, and 5 assists. I have said it in every single game preview this year, that is to stop the best player for the opposing team, you can win without doing it because Kentucky allowed Devan Downey to go off for 25+ the other day in a UK win but it makes is much easier on everyone to single out one player to stop. There is no doubt that UK will win big if Gaines does not play very well because he is only one of two players that average double figures for the ‘Dawgs and he is the engine that makes them run and without him they seemed lost on the court sometimes.

The third and final KEY TO THE GAME is for Kentucky to attack the basket and draw fouls. UK is top 10 in the nation in free throw percentage and every single player on the team shoots well from the line. If Kentucky can get some cheap fouls on the Georgia big men it will make their front line even more weak and will allow Patrick Patterson to have his way down low and allow the UK perimeter players to play more loosely knowing that Patterson will be underneath to clean up any shot that does not go in the basket. Georgia is already 2nd to last in the Southeastern Conference in field-goal percentage and if UK can put the better post player for the Bulldogs on the bench then they will settle for jumpers even more and will only be able to stick around for as long as they consistently hit contested jumpers and three-pointers.

My prediction for the game is that UK pulls out a victory by the score of 80-69, I think the game will be a bigger blowout than the score indicates because I think UK will control the game and be leading for at least most of the game. I think Ramel Bradley sits for a couple minutes throughout the game but I think he still goes for his usual 20 points and racks up 4 assists and 5 rebounds to go along with it. I think Patrick Patterson will bust out of his streak of a few games of no double-doubles by going for 17 points and 12 rebounds. I will bring you the UK/UGA Post Game entry the day after the game, Sunday.

UK vs. South Carolina – Post Game

Sorry it took so long to put up but here is the UK, USC post game report.

Kentucky did something that ‘Cat fans rarely see them do, and that is they started out strong and started out fast. UK scored 5 seconds into the game with a quick feed from Ramel Bradley to Patrick Patterson and Bradely nailed two threes right off the bat and helped UK get ahead early. It looked as though Kentucky was not used to being ahead at halftime by the way they started the second half, by allowing Carolina to hit 4 consecutive threes and start out the half on a 12-0 run and quickly took back the lead and made UK play from behind for more than half of the second half. UK did a great job in my opinion of fighting back and not trying to jack up three pointers to get right back in the game, they stuck to their gameplan and really earned the 78-70 win against USC yesterday in Rupp Arena. What made me even more suprised was the fact that UK played so well even without injured star Joe Crawford, who is still suffering from the plantar fasciitis that has plagued him all year. Derrick Jasper and Jodie Meeks both played through their injuries and both played key roles in the victory. Meeks scored 13 points and was 5-7 from the free throw line and Jasper had his usual 5 boards and hit a very timely three pointer to give UK a 2 point lead with only about 4 minutes left. Jasper played pretty good defense on Devan Downey in the second half and made him force a bunch of long attempts, even though he hit a few of them.

The main reason that Kentucky won was because of the free throw differential, Kentucky shot 23 free throws compared to the 3 that USC shot. Kentucky is 9th in the nation in free throw percentage and if they shoot 21 more than you odds are you are not going to win, especially if Ramel Bradley shoots 6 of them.

KEYS TO THE GAME… AFTER THE GAME

This is a new feature to the blog that I started after the Tennessee game, UK accomplished 1 1/2 of the KEYS TO THE GAME that I put in the UK vs. South Carolina preview. The only key that Kentucky was completely successful on was the fact that they dominated the boards against the Gamecocks. The Wildcats out-rebounded USC 35-23 overall and 13-9 on the offensive boards. Pat Patterson was a beast down low on the glass realing in 9 rebounds and securing them when it counted and when the game was close. South Carolina was one and done on most of their possessions and really had to take good shots to try to stay in the game. I stated in the preview that UK had to dominate the boards to prevent themselves from falling into the trap game that South Carolina was trying to make it. Kentucky had five players with at least 5 rebounds while USC only had 2 of them. In other words out of the 7 players Kentucky played  71% of them reached at least 5 rebounds while USC only had 20% of their players reach 5 boards or more.

The reason I said that UK fulfilled 1 1/2 of their KEYS was because they kind of reached one of them, which should explain the 1/2. I said that they needed to play with the same concentration as they did against Tennessee. They did for the most part but for the first 8-10 minutes of the second half UK was completely out-played and almost lost the game. USC hit 12 threes in the game and I would say 7 of them came in that 8 minute span. As soon as Gillispie put Ramel Bradley on Zam Fredrick that is when we started to come back and pull away.  Fredrick scored 9 points in the first four minutes of the second half but failed to score in the last 16, which is when Bradley took over the responsibility of guarding him. Bradley has now successfully defended one of the stars from the opposition in each of the last two games, after shutting down Chris Lofton in the second half of the tuesday night game against UT. Bradley has really been the driving force in the second half runs that UK has gone on in the past few games, that can be credited to the fact that Bradley has average 15 ppg in the second half of ball games over the past 6 games, scoring 13 points yesterday afternoon. If you take those 15 points and add the shut down defense that he has played Bradley has really given UK about 25 points in the second half of games in the last 6 or so.

Kentucky did not accomplish one of the KEYS, and that was shutting down USC’s guards. Like I said in the UK/USC preview Devan Downey was going to kill UK and of course he did, also for about 25 minutes Zam Fredrick was scortching the nets and in the second half Evaldus Baniulis hit 4 three pointers . The guards and Banuilis for the Gamecocks accounted for 56 of the 70 points, UK did a really nice job shutting down the points in the paint but we did not defend against the threes and perimeter shots very well, until Bradley switched onto Fredrick.

Suprise….

The suprise of the game was how dominate Ramel Bradley really can be, he played like an All-American yesterday and I would be completely suprised if he does not make the All-SEC first team. The only point guard that I see that might knock him out of first team consideration is JaMont Gordon of Mississippi State. Bradley recorded his second career double-double and was frankly unstoppably in the game. He has played 214 of the possible 215 minutes in SEC play and has scored 20+ points in every SEC game but 1. Bradley is turning into an Acie Law VI type player for Gillispie who helped Law gain alot of ability and guided him to a lottery pick in last year’s NBA Draft.

OTHER NOTES

•  I was very suprised how little Mark Coury has been playing the last couple games, though honestly I can not say I am not happy. Coury played only 4 minutes yesterday mainly due to the fact that Perry Stevenson is playing extremely well. I think it is easy to see that Stevenson is much better than Coury and should really take all of his playing time.
•  Sorry that I missed informed you guys about the injury status of Joe Crawford in the UK/USC preview, I said that he definetley was not going to miss time and he actually was not supposed to until the morning of the game when he said he was not ready to go. Matt May of Catspause.com said that UK probably held him out knowing that they had another week until their next game at Georgia and his foot injuy is one that takes some rest, so I would not expect him to miss the game on saturday.

NEXT GAME

Feb. 2 at Georgia

1:00 pm EST on CBS

UK vs. South Carolina – Preview

Their are many different scenarios that can unfold at Rupp Arena this saturday night when the UK Wildcats host South Carolina in an intruiging matchup of ranked opponent killer vs. the team that will give you everything its got but probably will not win. South Carolina will come into the game fresh off a near upset of the Florida Gators in which the Gators underestimated the Gamecocks. Hopefully that will not happen to the ‘Cats. Kentucky is coming into saturday with a win over the #3 team in the nation in which they played almost the entire game to perfection to stun the Volunteers, the roles will be reversed for this one because USC will be the one trying to spoil Kentucky’s momentum and officially kill their slight dreams of making the NCAA tournament. Kentucky has had a hard time stopping USC’s guards the last couple years, allowing Tre’ Kelley to drop 30 on UK last season. That will be one of the keys for the game on saturday for Kentucky to get this pretty realistic win.

KEYS TO THE GAME

The first key has already been touched on and that is the fact that UK must stop South Carolina’s guards. Devan Downey, a Cincinnati transfer, leads the team and is 2nd in the conference with 19.9 ppg and also is 3rd in the conference with a 5.0 apg average. UK must slow him down for them to be successful. When Downey scores under 20 points the Gamecoks are only 3-6 and have lost to some pretty weak teams like George Mason and UNC-Asheville in a couple games that he has not reached the 20 point plateau. If Kentucky just gets in his jersey as they did to Chris Lofton UK should win this one pretty handely.

The second key to the game is to crash the boards hard and get second chance points. USC is 2nd to last in rebound defense allowing over 38 rpg and if guys like Perry Stevenson and Patrick Patterson can perform like they did against Tennessee then we should get at least 40 rebounds in the game. The only problem is that UK is a horrible rebounding team, we rank 2nd to last in rebound offense at 35 rpg and so we are actually at a disadvantage on the boards even with Carolina being so weak on the boards. Another stat that UK must control is turnover margin. USC is second in the league in TO margin and UK is second……to last in TO margin. South Carolina forces 3 more turnovers than they commit so they know how to handle the ball and control tempo, UK turns the ball over 1.8 more times per game than they force them and that MUST change, Kentucky will not even win these kind of games with poor TO stats like these. Ramel Bradley needs to get up in the jersey of Devan Downey as he did to the best pure scorer in the conference two nights ago Chris Lofton. Downey’s assist/TO ratio is not even 2:1 and for a player who plays point guard as much as Downey does that is not a good number. Again though UK is worse then USC at areas that they are extremely weak at, Ramel Bradley only has 5 more assists than TO’s on the season, that stat is very misleading though because first off he does not play the PG position as much as Downey and UK feeds the post much more than Carolina which will result in fewer assist chances because unless the player goes straight up without making the move there will not be an assist oppurtunity.

The third and probably most important key will be to still play the same way and with the same concentration as they did against UT, even though Carolina is one of the weaker teams in the conference they proved the other day against Florida that if you are in one of those look ahead mind sets with them they can stun you or at least come close to. If Devan Downey is on and the rest of the team is hitting shots then they will be hard to beat because UK is one of the weakest three point shooting teams in the league and they will most likely lose a shooting match with USC unless Meeks, Crawford, and Bradley are on fire. I do not expect Downey to score over 20 and hit a lot of threes because Ramel will be in his grill all night and when Ramel gets motivated or angry he is impossible to score on and Lofton found that out the hard way, with a nearly scoreless second half and a L in the win/loss column.

I think UK will win pretty convincingly at home against the Gamecocks, I see them winning by a score of 76-61 and I think it will be in large part due to Patrick Patterson who I think exposes the weak interior D that USC has and drops 23 & 11 on the ‘Cocks. Gillispie will make sure that UK does not look ahead a couple games and he will have them physically and especially mentally ready to be in the mindset to crush the Gamecocks as hard as possible.

NEXT GAME

Jan. 26 vs. South Carolina

1:00 pm EST on ESPN

UK vs. Tennessee – Post Game

Kentucky got their best win in the last 3 years last night as they upset the #3 in the nation, and previously unbeaten in the SEC, Tennessee Volunteers in front of 23,400 people. Vols coach Bruce Pearl gave the Big Blue faithful props by saying ” I thought we had the game won with 1:14 left and we were down 2 and then (Ramel) Bradley does a good job and the crowd does a good job down the stretch”. The fans were crazy all game even when we were down by 10 points in the first half, I really think they fueled our comeback by still having faith in the team and keeping the team in good spirits.

KEYS TO THE GAME… AFTER THE GAME 

Now it is time to assess how the ‘Cats faired in my weekly KEYS TO THE GAME section of the game preview. They accomplished two out of the three, which is more than I can say about the Florida game in which we looked pitiful. Kentucky controlled the ball very well and did not turn it over very often. Tennessee starts their offense from their defense and last night they did not have nearly as many run outs and easy oppurtunities as they are accustomed to having. Kentucky only turned the ball over 12 times yesterday, over 7 less than Tennessee forces on average. Kentucky played great with the ball mainly because of the three and four guard lineups that they played with for the majority of the ball game, it also does not hurt that two of the guards were reliable point guards who are very good with the ball. Derrick Jasper played a magnificent game by being safe and secure with the ball and also by again dominating all guards on the rebounding part of the game. Against Florida he had a team high 10 rebounds and he did not dissapoint at all in Rupp late last night, Jasper finished with 6 rebounds, many of which came off missed free throws that other wise would have bounced right to the Tennessee player for an easy deuce.

The second KEY TO THE GAME that Kentucky excecuted very well on was the fact that they contained the perimeter shooters for Tennessee. Tennessee leads the conference with an average of 9.6 3’s/pg but last night they struggled mightly to hit them. They hit 7 but two of them by Chris Lofton came in garbage time (Final minute) when UK had already secured the win, another came right before halftime as well. Lofton had 5 of the threes and my vote for POTG, JaJuan Smith, struggled by shooting only 1-6 from three. As a team UT shot 7-26 from behind the arc for a percentage of 26.9%, UK only made 4-15 threes but many of theirs came in crucial parts of the game when they really needed to get a spark and get the crowd back in the game. With UK trailing by 6 points with about 5 minutes left Joe Crawford came off a screen and nailed a tough straight ahead 3 to cut the lead in half and then got the ball back on the next possession and sent the crowd into a frenzy by hitting his second consecutive three to tie the game. From that point on UK had the momentum and controlled the game.

The only KEY TO THE GAME that Kentucky failed to complete was the fact that the Volunteers started off very fast and Kentucky looked as though they could not keep up. I stressed the fact that UK would have to start off fast to stay with the Vols and they did not really do that but were able to fight back and win the game. Tennessee led by 10 points in the first half for the fourth straight game but this one is the first out of those that they have lost.

Suprises…

The obvious suprise of the game was game MVP Perry Stevenson who always seemed to be in the right place when Patrick Patterson was doubled and was rewarded with a dunk or lay in several times. He adjusted a lot of shots and managed to block 5 of them, to go along with his 14 points and 7 rebounds. He clearly had his best game in his two year career at UK and had the fans going crazy with his suprise play.

Another suprise was our overall domination of the stat sheet. The only stats that UT did better in is offensive rebounds (11-9) and steals (6-3), other than that is was flat out domination by the ‘Cats. They out rebounded UT 35 to 24 and had numerous put backs to boot, the Wildcats also shot a much much better percent from the floor, UK out shot UT from inside the line 48.9% to 38.6% and Tennessee is used to stifling teams on defense but the roles were reversed last night. Kentucky also had an amazing game from the line going 24-28 for a 85.7% average, they already led the SEC in free throw shooting but nobody expected the greatness that they achieved from the line tuesday night. Ramel Bradley led the charge by shooting 10-10 from the line, bettering his already league leading free throw percentage, every time we needed to widen the lead Ramel stepped up and knocked down crucial free throws to seal it.

OTHER NOTES

• For those of you worried about Joe Crawford do not worry, he IS suffering from the plantar fasciitis that had plagued him for weeks but word is he is definitely not going to miss time
• Derrick Jasper and Jodie Meeks are both supposed to play against USC this weekend, they will go through some stretches and work with the trainer but both are expected to play
• And just for the record I realize that I was completely wrong about the game… I predicted we were going to lose 88-63 and we pulled off the HUGE upset with the 72-66 win. I had know idea that our defense would look sooooo good against the nations 4th leading scoring team.
• And for all you UK fans worried about Pat Patterson leaving after this season think again and stop worrying!. His dad Buster Patterson said in an interview with a Lexington news station at Rupp after the game that he is staying and the whole family loves it there, so folks it looks like ‘ol PPatt might be around for a while!

NEXT GAME

Jan. 26 vs. South Carolina

1:00 pm EST on ESPN

UK vs. UT – 1st Half Thoughts

• Game about to start, GO CATS!!
• Hey would you look at that, ESPN jabbing our record and play!
• Crowd all blue baby…
• Already a foul on Coury 10 seconds in
• Chism for 3, good d Coury (Not)
• How does Harris miss a dunk????
• TAKE COURY OUT!!
• Cummon Harris box out!
• Jasper in the game with 17:02 to play in half
• Our offense is stalling here already, playing pretty good defense IMO
• Somebody come back and get the ball!…
• Meeks enters the game with 14:32 to play in the half
• Tennessee is commiting fouls left and right……….
• Nice play fellas!…
• Jasper has improved his shooting soooo much from last season
• Crawford has been out for a while now, Meeks came in for him….
• I think we are breaking the press pretty nicely, only turned it over once off the press
• 2 fouls on Crawford with still 8:44 left in the half
• We are NOT getting back quick enough!! BCG will be on their butts at HT……………
• Patterson helps us out alot by him being such a good foul shooter, they can’t do the hack-a-pat against him
• Tennessee is really helping us out with bad shots and stupid fouls
• What a feed by PPatt!!……..
• How can Stevenson miss soooo badly after hitting the first four???
• Does anyone on UK know that Chris Lofton can shoot??
• I don’t know about the intentional foul call…………….
• AHH gotta get out on Lofton! Meeks was on him but gotta get closer!….

Playing pretty good so far, just have to get out on their perimeter shooters, especially Chris Lofton.

Scotty Hopson

Scotty Hopson is the ninth rated basketball player in the nation among seniors accordin to Rivals.com, tonight he will be on 93.9 KSR radio at 8 pm ET. Hopson is the #1 rated player in the state of Kentucky and has apparently been contacted in the last few days by Gillispie for the first time in weeks. He will be the special guest and of course the main topic will be his recruiting, I will write again later if there is anything interesting on the program.

Reader Input

I would like for the readers of my blog to help me out with something. What do you want my next blog entry to be about or what topics do you want it to cover? Or would you like for me to just wait for the UK vs. Tennessee – Post Game. Just leave a comment for your input to be had.

UK vs. Tennessee – Preview

They average 86.3 ppg, win by average of 18.1 ppg, they make 9.6 three point shots per game, lead the nation in assists per game at 20.4, and they are second in the nation with a jaw-dropping 11.4 steals per game. We are not facing the Florida Gators anymore, the task that lays ahead  against the Tennessee Volunteers will surely be a tough one. All of the stats above, plus turnovers forced per game and points off turnovers, Tennessee is in the top 20 in the nation. They will bring many looks against us and we better have a good week of practice to prepare for perhaps the best Tennessee basketball team in the last 20 years. Tennessee will most likely move into the top 5 nationally tomorrow when the next rankings come out with the losses of two top 5 powerhouses, but every team in the Southeastern Conference knows, whether they are ranked in the top 5 or not, that Tennessee does not mess around and they WILL blow you out if you do not come prepared.

KEYS TO VICTORY

The first key will be what I refered to above, Kentucky MUST start out strong and start out fast against the Volunteers because there is no doubt that they will.  Tennessee has held a 10 point lead in the first half in each of the last 3 games and has been leading by atleast 10 in some part of the game for  11 straight games. Kentucky has made it a habit to get behind early and keep having to fight back to even be in the game, the only exception is the Vanderbilt game in which Vandy played the UK role and had to fight back just to send the game in to overtime. Tennesse is the most balanced team in the league with 9 players averaging at least 5 ppg., 4 of those players play the majority of their minutes in the post. Tennessee also leads the SEC with 7 players who have led the team in scoring for a game, Kentucky has had only 5 lead the team in scoring.

The second key will be containing their perimeter shooting. Tennessee leads the league with 9.6 made three pointers per game and they do not shy away from attempting them. Everyone knows Chris Lofton will take them, he was on the pre-season All-American team because he can shoot the long ball, even though he is in a 3 game slump it only takes one shot to break the drought. Ramar and JaJuan Smith also can shoot the three, in the game against the ‘Cats last year that Chris Lofton missed Ramar Smith filled in to score over 20 points. The guards push the ball fast and make very smart decisions in the open floor. By no means am I saying their guards are just spot up shooters, the two Smith guards can both drive the lane as well as any two guards in the SEC aside from maybe Joe Crawford.

The third and most important key will be not turning the ball over. Kentucky leads the league in turnovers with just over 17 per game and they are second in team history in giving the rock up. Tennessee has 9 players that average at least one steal per game and another that averages 0.9, if we are lazy with the ball Tennessee will take it from us and score. Because Tennessee has so many great defensive guards Ramel Bradley and Joe Crawford will not be able to carry the team again when every one else is struggling. With the return of Derrick Jasper and Jodie Meeks yesterday UK will have a couple more options to carry the load. Patrick Patterson must bust out of his funk that he has been in lately. He had 15 points in the Florida game but that came in over 40 minutes, he should be getting 20 or more against weak frontlines like the Gators had and especially if he is getting that many minutes. Derrick Jasper is a very reliable ball handler but since he has been out so long he is still lacking the stamina to play the full game, Meeks can play as many minutes as needed but he is a bad decision maker in the open floor and is not a great ballhandler. Perry Stevenson needs to be more aggressive tomorrow against UT because those guards I have talked about will collapse down if he does not make an immediate post move, he must be strong with the ball and not let a weak guard like Chris Lofton just take the ball from him.

My predicition is a very ugly one, Tennessee might be the best one loss team other than North Carolina and they do not like to keep games close, Gillispie likes to keep guys in when they make bad plays to make it a learning experience so I think our guys might lose hope once we get down by 15 or so. I like our heart last game so I may be wrong but I feel like Tennessee is a completely different animal than Florida is. I think Tennessee comes into Rupp and wins 88-63 behind Ramar Smith and Chris Lofton, I think we will turn the ball over and Tennessee, like always, will take advantage.

NEXT GAME

Jan. 22 vs. Tennessee

9:00 pm EST on ESPN

UK vs. Florida – Post Game

Referees Were Horrible 

Well it is hard to win when you are playing 8 vs. 5 for 45 minutes. The referees were particularly atrocious tonight calling many fouls that were non existent and numerous late calls that were whistled 2-3 seconds after the play ended. Kentucky lost in overtime to Florida 81-70 just a few minutes ago. Had a few calls been the other way we would have won in regulation easily and upset the Florida Gators in their own house, but the referees made sure that did not happen. This is the second consecutive game that Kentucky was potentially cheated out of a victory, earlier this week against Mississippi State we were cheated on some non calls and the same goes for this game tonight. For some reason the NCAA refs dislike Kentucky and really just do not want to see them win, it seems like grudges are held or something. Also I forget his name but one of the refs also did our last game at Miss. State, that might lead you to believe that he may have something to do with it. Here are a couple unbelievable stats about our free throws: In the last two games our opponents have out shot us from the free throw line 73-30 and three players from North Carolina have attempted more free throws this year than our whole team. there is no way that there is nothing going on and the SEC should look into this situation.

KEYS TO THE LOSS

Like I said in the preview, Kentucky would have to contain Nick Calathes to have a chance and they failed miserably at the task. Calathes flirted with a triple-double finishing with 24 points, 8 rebounds, and 8 assists. Calathes played poised down the stretch, more so than his freshman age would imply. Florida shot 40 free throws to Kentucky’s 18 and that again was the deciding factor in who won the game. It is obvious to people that watched the game that the referees clearly took the Gators’ side on many debatable calls that could have gone either way and had even just 2 of them gone to the Wildcats I would be talking about Kentucky’s hustle and courage.

Kentucky played with so much heart tonight and I think Coach Gillispie will look back on this game as a positive experience, because if UK can take a previously 15-3 squad into OT at their arena with the lack of talent that UK has is staggering because the calls and momentum seemed to be in Florida’s hands for 90% of the game. The only exception is about the final 3 minutes of regulation concluding with his game-tying last second shot. I thought Kentucky would ride that wave of courage and heart into overtime but Florida dominated the tempo and style of play in the extra period and knocked down all 10 of there free throws in OT and really had the game in hand after a few possessions of overtime. Bradley is one of my favorite ‘Cats of all-time because of his will to win and his ‘never give up’ attitude. He could have easily thrown in the towel with a couple minutes to play in regulation but he put the team on his back when Jodie Meeks was called for a phantom foul and Patrick Patterson began to cramp up in his leg and hit the game-tying trey as time expired to send the game into OT.

The main reason UK lost was the free throw deferential but besides that it had to be the lack of a second down low scorer. Kentucky had to play a great portion of the game with 4 guards and only 1 big man in Patrick Patterson. That let Florida double on Patterson without giving up any easy baskets and allowed them to really crash the boards. UK out-rebounded Florida by 1 but they were out-rebounded by Florida in the final 25 minutes by around 15, Kentucky only had one good rebounder crashing the boards where as Florida had 2-3 every time the ball was shot. Mark Coury finished with a measly 4 points even though he was a starter. Perry Stevenson was the only other big man who played and he finished with 4 points before fouling out. The top 3 big men on the team finished with only 23 points, where as Florida’s top 3 big men finished with 35 points. That is a 12 point difference, Kentucky needed just a couple baskets throughout the whole game to change the situation of the game.

Kentucky’s schedule gets no easier as they have less than 48 hours to prepare for their Tuesday night game at home against the Tennessee Volunteers, who are considered by many to be one of the top 5 teams in the nation. I honestly do not think this one will be close. I predict the final score will be 88-63 UT kills UK, they will press us all game and force 20+ turnovers and I think Jamar Smith finishes with 27 points and I think Chris Lofton has 18 points.

NEXT GAME

Jan. 22 vs. Tennessee

9:00 pm EST on ESPN

Don’t Forget…

Come over to the UKmadness message board to talk about the game tonight, talk with me about the team’s play or other things like recruiting. Visit us here anytime:

ukmadness.proboards102.com

I will be on the site tonight during the game. I have some breaking news, Derrick Jasper and Jodie Meeks are both participating in team warm ups and both are expected to play, that really helps our chances at beating the Gators tonight, GO CATSS!!