The Good
* So it's New Year's Eve. For whatever reason you're playing on Sunday again, because you never play unless it's some godforsaken hour of the day on a Friday or a Sunday. You're coming off a butt-whooping of your archrival. You're playing against a team that always gives you problems, and a coach who loves nothing more than uglifying the game. That's not a recipe for success, and the Cats nearly didn't. But they come out with what was a crucial win in a game that was the embodiment of "hard fought."
* Wenyen continues to ball. The guy oddly has nothing going toward the basket, but he's starting to make several winning plays throughout these games. He's one of the few guys we have who will scrap on the glass, and he will attack 50/50 balls as well as almost any player I've seen in the Cal era. If he had any semblance of an offensive game off the bounce he'd be dangerous, but all in all I love the way he's playing.
* Making plays down the stretch. When the game was tight at the end, various players stepped up to make winning plays. I loved the Diallo drive along the baseline in the last three minutes. I loved Shai. And I liked Quade having the guts to step to the line late and drill free throws. A good sign from a team that's going to play a lot of close games from here on.
* Shai at the line. Money.
* PJ Washington's run with about 10 minutes left. Yeah, it wasn't a consistent effort or anything, but Washington was all in that game when Kentucky started to make its push.
* Three-point defense again. After getting routinely torched by UCLA, Kentucky pushed Georgia into tough shots just as they did Louisville. Some of those shots were makeable, but I saw some pretty good close-out defense from Kentucky, and the length bothered Georgia from the beginning. In its last two games Kentucky has allowed 5 three-point shots on 46 attempts. That'll do.
The Bad
* The charge call on Wenyen in the second half. I thought the officiating was poor on the whole, but that call appeared to be an example of an official lining up the call before it unfolded in front of him. College refs are way too keen on calling the charge for some reason, even when the offensive player is completely in control.
* Nick Richards logged three minutes last night. We need more from the big guy.
* The free throw atrocity late. We'd been awesome for the entire game, and then Farnham and his partner jinxed us by talking about it. From that point on it was an adventure, and if Georgia could have thrown a shot in things would have gotten dicey.
* Mark Fox channeling his inner Tubby Smith. Fox tried to take a page from Steve Alford's game and slow this one down to a drip, and it almost worked. It's clear Kentucky prefers the game moving fluidly, and where we're going to run into issues is when we get a team who's hitting shots and who gets the game to a crawl. I'm looking at you, Tennessee.
* The shooting percentages were among the lowest in this program's history in a win. In some ways that's impressive that a young team can gut out a win like that, but in other ways that was essentially a trip to the dentist's office last night on offense. Yikes.
* Speaking of offense: way too many shots came from the wrong people at the wrong times. I haven't seen this team looking for its own too much this year, but on a few possessions last night there was one pass and then a guy jacked up a contested shot in a terrible place. Hami Diallo fired one in the first half that almost broke my psyche. This team can't win like that against a good team, needless to say, and if you get that sort of stuff on the road that's how you get trounced.
* Kevin Knox scuffling. Knox is going through the same kinds of things John Wall did at this time: the defense is keying on him more, and he's finding it really difficult to operate. His body language is terrible, he's not playing with that effortlessness he was early, and the game is becoming hard for him. I think he'll work out of it, but sometimes it takes these freshmen several games to get it going once they fall in a trench.
The Gilgeous
* Shai. What to say about this guy? It's a double-edged sword, like it always is for Kentucky basketball: on one hand he's become this team's best player, clearly, and that's awesome for a guy who's so darned likeable. But on the other hand, he's slowly becoming a first-round pick. I've chalked him up as a returner from the beginning: Shai doesn't have the electric speed most NBA guys have. He isn't a great leaper. He doesn't have Rajon Rondo's juice. He can't shoot the ball yet. But he gets a lot of that back with some of the other intangibles he has, notably his mind-boggling length and the pace at which he plays the game. He's one of those guys who just "knows how to play," as the saying goes. The guy is becoming a star right before our eyes.
* So it's New Year's Eve. For whatever reason you're playing on Sunday again, because you never play unless it's some godforsaken hour of the day on a Friday or a Sunday. You're coming off a butt-whooping of your archrival. You're playing against a team that always gives you problems, and a coach who loves nothing more than uglifying the game. That's not a recipe for success, and the Cats nearly didn't. But they come out with what was a crucial win in a game that was the embodiment of "hard fought."
* Wenyen continues to ball. The guy oddly has nothing going toward the basket, but he's starting to make several winning plays throughout these games. He's one of the few guys we have who will scrap on the glass, and he will attack 50/50 balls as well as almost any player I've seen in the Cal era. If he had any semblance of an offensive game off the bounce he'd be dangerous, but all in all I love the way he's playing.
* Making plays down the stretch. When the game was tight at the end, various players stepped up to make winning plays. I loved the Diallo drive along the baseline in the last three minutes. I loved Shai. And I liked Quade having the guts to step to the line late and drill free throws. A good sign from a team that's going to play a lot of close games from here on.
* Shai at the line. Money.
* PJ Washington's run with about 10 minutes left. Yeah, it wasn't a consistent effort or anything, but Washington was all in that game when Kentucky started to make its push.
* Three-point defense again. After getting routinely torched by UCLA, Kentucky pushed Georgia into tough shots just as they did Louisville. Some of those shots were makeable, but I saw some pretty good close-out defense from Kentucky, and the length bothered Georgia from the beginning. In its last two games Kentucky has allowed 5 three-point shots on 46 attempts. That'll do.
The Bad
* The charge call on Wenyen in the second half. I thought the officiating was poor on the whole, but that call appeared to be an example of an official lining up the call before it unfolded in front of him. College refs are way too keen on calling the charge for some reason, even when the offensive player is completely in control.
* Nick Richards logged three minutes last night. We need more from the big guy.
* The free throw atrocity late. We'd been awesome for the entire game, and then Farnham and his partner jinxed us by talking about it. From that point on it was an adventure, and if Georgia could have thrown a shot in things would have gotten dicey.
* Mark Fox channeling his inner Tubby Smith. Fox tried to take a page from Steve Alford's game and slow this one down to a drip, and it almost worked. It's clear Kentucky prefers the game moving fluidly, and where we're going to run into issues is when we get a team who's hitting shots and who gets the game to a crawl. I'm looking at you, Tennessee.
* The shooting percentages were among the lowest in this program's history in a win. In some ways that's impressive that a young team can gut out a win like that, but in other ways that was essentially a trip to the dentist's office last night on offense. Yikes.
* Speaking of offense: way too many shots came from the wrong people at the wrong times. I haven't seen this team looking for its own too much this year, but on a few possessions last night there was one pass and then a guy jacked up a contested shot in a terrible place. Hami Diallo fired one in the first half that almost broke my psyche. This team can't win like that against a good team, needless to say, and if you get that sort of stuff on the road that's how you get trounced.
* Kevin Knox scuffling. Knox is going through the same kinds of things John Wall did at this time: the defense is keying on him more, and he's finding it really difficult to operate. His body language is terrible, he's not playing with that effortlessness he was early, and the game is becoming hard for him. I think he'll work out of it, but sometimes it takes these freshmen several games to get it going once they fall in a trench.
The Gilgeous
* Shai. What to say about this guy? It's a double-edged sword, like it always is for Kentucky basketball: on one hand he's become this team's best player, clearly, and that's awesome for a guy who's so darned likeable. But on the other hand, he's slowly becoming a first-round pick. I've chalked him up as a returner from the beginning: Shai doesn't have the electric speed most NBA guys have. He isn't a great leaper. He doesn't have Rajon Rondo's juice. He can't shoot the ball yet. But he gets a lot of that back with some of the other intangibles he has, notably his mind-boggling length and the pace at which he plays the game. He's one of those guys who just "knows how to play," as the saying goes. The guy is becoming a star right before our eyes.
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