Senior Day Win! Edition

Find out the latest on recruiting/Lady Cats and analysis from today's Senior Day win over Florida.


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-There were supposed to be a ton of UK recruits in this weekend. I haven’t heard who made it but I was told Selby wasn’t expected to make it. Some believe he may have heard Knight is coming to UK and canceled his visit because of this…we shall see. There is also a lot of talk believing Kanter would leave committing to UK. He said he wanted to take his time before committing, so this news was a little surprising but we shall see if he does or not.

-UK women play for the SEC Tourney championship against UT at 6:30 eastern on ESPN2. The Lady Cats played an exceptional second half with tenacious defense to comeback and beat MSU last night and good luck to them today.

-The SEC bracket is set; you can see the bracket at bigbluetopia.com. Times can be found here: http://www.secsports.com/championships/2010_sec_mens_basketball_tournament.aspx

Game notes: UK takes down Florida 74-66 in front of a crowd of 24,354. UK goes 18-0 in Rupp this year. 1st time since 1981 both men’s and women’s team went perfect on their home floors.

UK improves to 29-2 (14-2 in the conference). With Vandy losing yesterday we already had the SEC season title by ourselves, this win gives us a 2 win lead over Vandy for the title.

Win or lose today we were likely set as a #1 seed and with Syracuse not being able to play in the East bracket because their arena is hosting it, our spot in the East is pretty much set. There is a chance if Kansas loses in the Big 12 tourney and we win the SEC tourney, to put UK in the Midwest as the overall number one seed.

Florida on the other hand needed this one as they are on the bubble. If they cannot get a few wins in the SEC tourney they may be biting their nails on Selection Sunday.

Cal said before the game his policy for senior night is if a player is on track to graduate, then they can be part of senior night. If Patterson wasn’t on track he wouldn’t have been part of it. Some want only four year players to be part, but Mark Krebs came here as a sophomore, so he wouldn’t be part of senior night either if that is what you want.

This was the 1st time UK has swept the series with the Gators since 2004.

At the end, players joined the cheerleaders arm in arm to do the Ole Kentucky Home. Then the crowd did a one more year chant at Patterson and the players joined in. Only way Patterson considers coming back is if UK goes out in the early in the NCAA tourney, so I hope he goes pro.

We started out with a 36-18 lead and I expected it to be a route from that point on…should have known better. At the 5:20 mark Florida dunked it, to bring the game within 2, 62-60…but they never could get a lead or a tie throughout the game. I can’t remember the last game that can be said about.

Harris, Stevenson and Krebs all received the start for senior day and didn’t do too bad for the five minutes or so they were out there. UK led 7-3 when they came out.

Bledsoe and Miller tied for leading scorers with 14. It was good to see Bledsoe have a good game after being in a slump as of late. Bledsoe had the best highlight play with his crazy layup. We will need him to play well to go deep into March.

Miller got his three point shooting stroke back, going 3-5 from behind the arc. We shot ok from three, thanks to a great start out of the gate. We ended up 8-18 (44.4%). We shot 20-28 (71.4%) from the free throw line.

Patterson scored 13 points as he passed Cliff Hagan for #16 on the all time scoring list.

Wall-11, Dodson-10, Cousins-8, Orton-2, and Stevenson-2. Wall had 8 assist in the game.

Florida had very balanced scoring, Tyus led with 12. Only 8 players played for Florida and 7 of them scored at least 6.

UK and Florida tied for turnovers with 13. Florida outrebounded UK 36-31. This continues to be something we need to work on. Even when we end up with more, there were plenty of times, if we had blocked out that we could have gotten more. We gave up 17 offensive rebounds…that is 17 more possessions. Many of those offensive rebounds could have been avoid. We are the biggest team in the nation and need to take advantage of this on a higher level.

Cousins did not have a great game; Florida did well to collapse on him. Although he was only one rebound and two points away from receiving his 19th double double. Teams are going to force us to hit threes by playing zone and collapsing inside, leaving our guards wide open from the perimeter.

UK plays next this Friday at 1 eastern, against the winner of South Carolina and Alabama. If we win that, we will play the winner of Ole Miss/UT. UT is the team I fear most in this tourney, they are not just the highest ranked competition, but the team that is playing the best ball right now.

Coach Cal’s thoughts: Our 9-12 guys are the best Cal has ever coached. Putting in guys like Stevenson doesn’t hurt this team.

He is proud that Harris, Krebs, Stevenson and Patterson are all set to graduate.

We didn’t cut down the nets after the game and said at the SEC tourney if they win they will not cut down nets there either. The only nets they cut down are in the NCAA tourney.

(Many teams cut down nets winning the elite 8 game, going into the final four. I will be curious if we make the final four will we do this?)

Cal contributed to Florida outrebounding us because Florida needed this one to help their tourney chances. He believes one win in the SEC puts them in and two wins will just help their seeding.

Everyone is trying to take a charge on Bledsoe because they can’t keep up with us. If Bledsoe can stop a little earlier we have extra dunks over the player trying to take the charge.

It’s so nice to have Daniel Orton on this team. Cousins was getting tired and Cal tried to put Orton in and Orton said put Perry in because it’s senior night. Cal was very proud of that from Orton.

Liggins brings energy to this game. He hasn’t been lately getting the 50/50 balls and he needs to bring that back and not revert back to his old ways.

Cal wants them to have a winner’s mindset. When they believe they are fouled and it isn’t called just say to yourself “oh well, were winning anyways.” You can’t control outside forces and if you keep it up despite feeling robbed by the officials, you will end up playing better.

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Go Cats! Win the SEC Tourney!