Let's Go To Minneapolis: Kentucky/Auburn Game Thread

[Lighthouse]

Looking at the stats tells us a lot about why we lost and how it was a team effort. While we know Hagans had a bad game running the offense and turnovers, look at others. PJ for instance had a double double, but also missed 5 FT's and one was the first of a 1&1. He also had 5 turnovers.

Kentucky 71

3	*	38	5-13	0-2	4-6	2-8	10	3	3	0	1	1	14
2	*	38	4-8	1-4	1-1	1-4	5	2	3	7	0	1	10
22	*	44	4-5	0-0	1-3	2-4	6	3	1	0	0	0	9
14	*	36	3-11	1-5	0-0	1-2	3	3	6	2	1	1	7
23	*	8	0-0	0-0	0-0	0-1	1	0	0	0	1	0	0
25		37	10-18	2-4	6-11	5-8	13	3	0	5	2	2	28
5		19	1-6	1-6	0-0	0-0	0	2	1	0	0	0	3
13		4	0-0	0-0	0-0	0-0	0	2	0	0	0	0	0
4		1	0-0	0-0	0-0	0-0	0	1	0	0	0	0	0
TM		0	0-0	0-0	0-0	0-3	3	0	0	0	0	0	0
	-	225	27-61	5-21	12-21	11-30	41	19	14	14	5	5	71

[40bill]

I do wonder if Auburn gets the Louisville treatment. BUT

What a run . Smoked Tennessee, Kansas, North Carolina and took out the Cats in less than a month.
Kind of hope it stands.

[Blue Heaven]

No doubt of that. May have gone to the F4 with a Quade Green. It wasn't just the turnovers and lack of a scoring threat form Hagans...we just couldn't run a set with Ashton's man sagging off him so far. A brief set of about 4 games of good defense convinced Cal that Hagans was the man till the bitter end. And teams adjusted for that pretty quickly.

Spot on. It was obvious, at least the last two games, that Quickley was the more confident/less eratic one. But Cal sometimes is loyal to a fault. Still. Hit Fts and we win that game.

[Blue Heaven]

UNC Hagans proved to be a fluke. Have to believe the 30 games, not the 3.

At some point I tired of hearing about him being a reclassify too. Must have been held back once or twice and then jumped back ahead. He'll be 20 in July and once teams had a scouting report he was never very effective again. At least not more than one game in a row.

Too bad Maxey will squash his PT next season. The odd man out will be Quickley and that's a shame. He's much steadier than Ashton. At least he proved that in the tournament.

[SCBlu]

I think Herro was exposed today and his NBA stock dropped, another year will help him...

Not sure about that. He certainly wasn't hitting his shot, but even the best shooters have off days. Just poor timing. And remember, he won the previous game for us with.......his shooting! He did play some defense, too. In all, I'm afraid he's gone.

[Dwight Schrute]

You could kinda see Quickley moving over to the 2 guard position next year (assuming Hagans comes back). Next year's front court worries me though. Not a ton of depth or skill so far.

[Joneslab]

I thought Cal should've played Quickley more but man, Quickley just could not hit anything yesterday after his first shot.

All five of his missed threes came at huge times. He blew every one.

I thought he was right in there in how and why we lost that game.

[J.Jennings]

I am going to chime in on Q. Green for a second. Yes it's true once the elephant left the room this team got better and improved. However i do wonder had Quade been giving the vote of confidence from the start that he was the starting point guard this year, i do think that whole situation would have been better and this team would have been just as good or better. Hagans played some great defense early one but once he knew the job was his, he became determined to show the world he could play offense.

I know we lost as a team but i blame Hagans for this loss, a ball stopping point guard who's IQ is horrible.

[J.Jennings]

You could kinda see Quickley moving over to the 2 guard position next year (assuming Hagans comes back). Next year's front court worries me though. Not a ton of depth or skill so far.

Hagans is already talking about his NBA future, that is the problem with some of these kids, play like crap and think they are automatically entitled to be a NBA player....

[Dwight Schrute]

Hagans is already talking about his NBA future, that is the problem with some of these kids, play like crap and think they are automatically entitled to be a NBA player....

I don't disagree with this. I think that's a Calipari effect.

[Dwight Schrute]

ESPN apparently did a segment last night asking whether Cal's job is in jeopardy. They've lost their mind.

[Joneslab]

Yep, definitely the Cal effect.

I wouldn't really heed anything anybody said after the loss yesterday though. I expect all of them with the exception of probably Quickley to test the waters.

Some of the mocks do have Hagans right at the edge of the first round. He has some NBA tools. So it's not that crazy. It's certainly no crazier than Archie Goodwin or Marquis Teague leaving.

You would think that he'll get in the workouts and they'll see the way he shoots the ball and recommend that he stay in college. The NBA is such a shooter's league now that if you're hamstrung the way he is re: shooting then you're going to have a very hard time.

[Dwight Schrute]

Yep, definitely the Cal effect.

I wouldn't really heed anything anybody said after the loss yesterday though. I expect all of them with the exception of probably Quickley to test the waters.

Some of the mocks do have Hagans right at the edge of the first round. He has some NBA tools. So it's not that crazy. It's certainly no crazier than Archie Goodwin or Marquis Teague leaving.

You would think that he'll get in the workouts and they'll see the way he shoots the ball and recommend that he stay in college. The NBA is such a shooter's league now that if you're hamstrung the way he is re: shooting then you're going to have a very hard time.

This is why I think Tyler Herro is going to play his way into a pretty high draft pick.

[Joneslab]

Yeah, I would expect Herro to leave. His size is a major plus for him and I just don't see him falling past the middle-to-edge of the first round.

You would hope one of them maybe looked at PJ's season and how he improved his stock and maybe thinks about staying but it could just be Quickley, Montgomery, and Richards returning.

In that case if Kentucky doesn't pull in one of these remaining five-star bigs we're after then I would expect next season to be a significant step down.

However, absolute best-case scenario is we return Hagans and one of Johnson/Herro then things obviously look way brighter. That would be a super-crowded backcourt though so the chances of that happening are very slim. But imagine if Hagans leaves and we return Herro. The Herro/Maxey backcourt is something special to think about.

I don't think Maxey is going to have the shooting problems we saw Hagans have this season.

[Dwight Schrute]

I think Hagans, Quickley, Montgomery, and Richards return. I think Johnson is projected kinda late in the lottery, so if that holds he's obviously gone but you'd love to have him back. I think he'd be a star next year if he came back.

The front court situation worries me next year unless Montgomery and Richards really step up.