"GAME THREAD." KENTUCKY FAVORED BY 5 VS ALABAMA

[40bill]

Team kinda reminds me of a line in the movie 'Seabiscuit'
''does he run fast?'
"yeah.....in every direction."

Team showed a lot with the N Carolina and Louisville wins.
I've seen plenty of opening game SEC losses.....cause now the grind starts.

[Jeff ROCKober]

A tough loss as Bama out attacked Kentucky today. I loved Hagens play. A tough kid. I loved that UK didn't quit. That will serve them right down the road. Reid was not very good missing a key dunk and shooting an ill advised three. Montgomery looked like a deer in headlights today. Herro with a pretty good shot to steal one but his shot was not falling at all in the second half. Kentucky came out with no intensity at all in the second half. You have to play hard 40 minutes or you lose especially when on the road.
I thought UK played pretty well the first half and really bad the second half. Hagens and Quickley performed well for first road SEC game. Others need to step it up.

[Pobilly]

Well i said early in the season i would watch again after the bowl game. Well was out with the wife and got home for the last 5 minutes. Not impressed with this team. I think I will continue to just check in here and not watch this team. you guys give me enough updates to know where this team is at. I take a little of the good and bad and make a decision. This team can only hope to win a few SEC games on the road. They will lose most SEC road games. Just too young at the guard position. I know we always have freshman guards any more but you can have young freshman players mentally and that is what you have here. Hope they can with 10 or so SEC games. KU will win again in RUPP just the way its looks to be. At least they fought when they got down down double digits but against better SEC Teams they will get buried in this type of game.

[teamchemistry15]

We got bad PJ today. He was getting torched on D.

[Blue Heaven]

This is not a loss I can be upset about. After a good 1st half, we couldn’t buy a bucket in the 2nd half. Wide open jumpers, bunnies, it didn’t matter. It was one shot and done for the majority of the 2nd half. Our defense was great though. Hagans is a game changer defensively. He’s been looking to score more lately. If he develops a jumper look out. OThis looks like a team that will take some lumps in conference and get hot come tourney time. We have seen this before. I like our direction right now. Our body language looks good. We have the ability to be a contender.

[TrueblueCATfan]

Ugh I hate losing to teams that we are better than......Bama played great for a team who lost at home to Georgia State

[40bill]

Ugh I hate losing to teams that we are better than......Bama played great for a team who lost at home to Georgia State

well.....pretty sure Louisville and North Carolina said the same thing about a team that lost to Seton Hall.

This is NOT an overpowering team and will have to click on almost all cylinders to win. This team is gonna have to WORK. Hagans seems willing, and even though he missed the shot, so does Herro.
Matter of fact, didn't see many folks loafing.

Basket was nailed shut. Mental. Played a team that had a lot to prove. Yada yada yada.....
really not surprised. almost every year somebody in conference we don't expect kicks us pretty good. They know us, they know Cal, they know what to expect.
Ten more losses will be a problem.
Biggest thing about this is the team likely needs to steal one we aren't counting on. Auburn or Tennessee sweep....something.

[Joneslab]

This isn't a team that can beat hardly anyone if they get a terrible game individually from a player.

Just not enough dudes. It has to be an all-hands-on-deck thing. I think this team is a notch better than the one last year, but like last year if you have one guy out there playing awful then it's really hard to win. The margin for error is razor thin.

Reid Travis was abysmal in that game yesterday. I mean he put up his worst game by far as a Cat. And I thought Cal made a bad choice by trying to shoehorn the ball back to Travis all through the second half to try and get him going. Just a putrid performance against Alabama's springy length.

That's going to be a recipe for disaster almost every time for UK. The reason we'd played better is because we were getting something from almost everybody who played. Yesterday we couldn't make up for Travis's awfulness.

That's the team that will lose 6 or 7 games in the SEC, limp in as a 5 or 6 seed, and have to fight to make it out of the first weekend.

[Joneslab]

Also, Kentucky's transition defense was very poor. Bill mentioned not seeing anybody loafing. They did loaf, actually. It started early and lasted until the last couple of minutes. When you're giving up clean looks over and over in transition that means you aren't playing hard.

I really liked Ashton Hagans' grit even though he took about three awful shots, all of which hurt us because nobody would run the floor. But Hagans fought in that game. He was the only one.

That team looked like the one that usually takes the floor when Cal gets swaggy.

[85 Fly]

We are everyone's team to beat so you all are right we can't slack and we can't have poor shooting nights or else... I said in a previous thread to watch out for BAMA if they are hitting 3s and they have size/length-ta-daaaa!.
BAMA when they are hot you have to play really well to beat them but this same team will turn around and lose the next game by 10/15 points, just depends on which team shows up and they showed up for us.

[J.Jennings]

Off topic but still Bama related and perhaps a way to put things in perspective sometimes. No one is going to questions Nick Saban at Alabama even though Bama was stompded last night, does Cal deserve this kind of respect as well? Of course i get ticked off and hate to lose but it happens, even to great coaches and programs like BAMA and Saban in football.

Overall, not mad about the Alabama game, they have a good tough minded coach and it's a tough game on the road for a young team, hope we learn from it and move on, season not over...

[Joneslab]

No one is going to questions Nick Saban at Alabama even though Bama was stompded last night, does Cal deserve this kind of respect as well?

No.

Cal has been very good at Kentucky but much of the criticism has been deserved. The problem is some Kentucky fans can't criticize with any subtlety, so everything has to be terrible and awful and falling apart. And we live in an era where everybody has his eye on the next coach, so at any sign of trouble fans start to wonder if somebody else could do it better. This is happening everywhere and not just at UK.

But going back to Saban, it's much harder to build a sort of dynasty in basketball. Players leave with much more frequency, and the sport is a lot more flukish. Anything can happen in basketball. Football has some surprises but generally the best athletes win. In basketball you're trying to throw a ball into a hoop. Chance and luck plays into the game a lot more.

Coach K is the only coach in the game who can approach Saban, and honestly it sort of looks like K and Saban have some of the same personality quirks.

Cal has some genius--his ability to motivate players, his willingness to try to be on the cutting edge of the game--but he isn't a coach's coach like Saban seems to be. Saban (and Coach K, obviously) also nails the living room stuff Cal does so you've got the best of both worlds: coaching and recruiting. That's how you build a juggernaut.

Dabo Swinney is approaching legendary status as well it seems.

[Lighthouse]

I agree with JJ and Will about Saban. There will be very few, if any, Bama fans calling for Saban's head. This is never true with any Kentucky Coach, no matter the sport.

[Ratt]

We are everyone's team to beat so you all are right we can't slack and we can't have poor shooting nights or else... I said in a previous thread to watch out for BAMA if they are hitting 3s and they have size/length-ta-daaaa!.
BAMA when they are hot you have to play really well to beat them but this same team will turn around and lose the next game by 10/15 points, just depends on which team shows up and they showed up for us.

100-percent correct. It's ALWAYS this way in the SEC and fans need to just come to expect it. For example - No matter how bad Vandy is, that always seems like a very tough game at their place. This UK team I think is trending toward the right direction but it still has several flaws that will show it's head often and when it happens, they are going to lose a few games. That's 3 losses so far - this team could lose 8 to 10 games.

Off topic but still Bama related and perhaps a way to put things in perspective sometimes. No one is going to questions Nick Saban at Alabama even though Bama was stompded last night, does Cal deserve this kind of respect as well? Of course i get ticked off and hate to lose but it happens, even to great coaches and programs like BAMA and Saban in football.

Overall, not mad about the Alabama game, they have a good tough minded coach and it's a tough game on the road for a young team, hope we learn from it and move on, season not over...

I'm telling you guys now and I have often spewed things about Cal but those wanting him gone are going to drastically hate what is coming down the pipeline. This era of Kentucky basketball has been fantastic and exciting in and out every year. Sure - I would want more titles. I want kids to stay longer, blah blah blah... I'm telling you. People screaming for Cal's head is going to be regretting that 2 and 3 year after.

[Dwight Schrute]

The difference in Cal vs Saban is that Saban has delivered 4 titles to them and has shown no evidence of any dropoff from the beginning of his career. I like Cal but the Cal of 2019 ain't the Cal of 2009.