Cats bounce back and beat Auburn 78-54 in front of a crowd of 23,065 in Rupp Arena. Wildcats improve to 13-3, 1-1 in the conference. UK only won the 2nd half by 4, after leading 41-21 at the half. This is typical for most teams in the midst of a route because of the subs coming in at the end but that wasn’t really the case tonight. Poole came in some at the end but for the most part, it was our core team for the full 40 minutes.
The clear player of the game was Terrence Jones with 35 points who just turned 19 on Sunday. 22 of the 32 came in the 2nd half. He did not receive a double double, with only 8 rebounds. He also had 3 big steals and 2 blocks. This is a UK freshman scoring record in one game. The record before this season belonged to Jamal Mashburn until Lamb broke it with 32 against Winthrop.
Interesting with all the talented freshman from last year, no one could break Mashburn’s record and this season it has been broken twice already with still half of a season to go.
Jones previous highest scoring game was 29 against Oklahoma. Not bad for a player battling the flu. There seems to be something special about the 6th man this year.
Other UK scorers: Knight-13, Miller-10, Harrellson-8, Lamb-8, and Liggins with 4.
Cats shot 29-57 (50.9%) from the field, 11-26 (42.3%) from three, free throwing shooting not so great tonight 9-17 (52.9%).
UK won the overall rebounding 36-33 but Auburn beat UK in offensive rebounds 12-11, the fourth team this season to beat UK in this category. You have to wonder if UK was lacking effort in this area at times, knowing the game was in hand or at the very least Auburn giving extra effort to try their best to offset what was a clear talent advantage for UK.
Close in turnovers tonight: UK-14, Auburn-15.
Calipari improved to 4-0 against Auburn coach Barbee, who played for Cal at UMASS and then served as an asst. under Cal at both UMass and Memphis. Barbee prior to the game called Cal his mentor and mentioned how they talk on the phone every week. Cal after the game mentioned how he hates playing friends because somebody has to lose.
Jones comments after the game: Thoughts on Georgia: We just had a slow start; no one really picked us up. Usually two players keep us in it. Doron kept us in the 1st half but no one else picked us up. We got to play through our bumps and in that game we just didn’t.
Thompkins was their best big, they did well helping and boxing out for rebounds.
Wished he could have come out stronger, coming out slow (he feels) messes up the chemistry of the team.
On tonight: Auburn was worn down in the second half, allowing him to do more in the 2nd half than he could in the first.
Cal’s thoughts after the game: Auburn is undermanned at this point but they were more organized than we were in the 2nd half. They were beating us in the second half at one point even, when it got down to 17. Watch this team in future years once he can bring in more help.
He thought Harrellson was awful in the first half. He had zero rebounds at the half and this is why he didn’t start him in the second half. Doesn’t want him to revert back to the way he played last year by trying to grab balls with one hand. Made fun of Harrellson by referencing him from last year as a guy who just smiled no matter what and everyone on the bench was thinking “poor Josh…”
Jones was a little sick and took himself out in the 1st half. Wasn’t happy with Jones threes even if he was hitting them. We are not winning with Jones shooting threes. If he makes a three or two that’s fine but him shooting threes isn’t why we are winning. He is our worst three point shooter and you want your best shooters shooting the threes.
When asked if he saw improvements from Georgia, he said he would need to go back and look at the tape. He still wants to see this “perfect game” and he isn’t sure if he is expecting too much from them. He had a meeting with a few of the players and he asked them if he is expecting too much from them, if his vision from them and his expectations are too high.
He said the automatic response is to say no coach you are fine but he wanted them to go back and really think about that question. He mentioned you think all kids want to be the star but some actually don’t have that personality.
Cal mentioned fans gave Vargas a standing ovation when Vargas grabbed a ball, pointing out that is exactly what Cal wants to see out of Vargas. He busted out laughing when he saw the fans stand up and cheer for this because the fans know exactly what Cal want to see out of these kids. When you make plays like this, you get to stay on the floor.
Tomorrow is the one year anniversary of the Haiti earthquake. He referenced how great of an experience of raising 1.5 million dollars for Haiti and going down and visiting. He discussed how he needs to donate more to an orphanage that he visited, pointing out that when tragedies happen we help and then we forget about them.
Cal on Georgia: He said he didn’t have fun coaching at Georgia. They were not committed to the game and that isn’t fun to coach.
Tonight we were up 20 and Cal was still going crazy and some fans were looking at him like he’s crazy. He refuses to settle for anything but the best from them no matter the score. His job is to keep the pressure on them to get better.
Are we good enough? Well we aren’t deep and he likes his team but believes they need to execute better. We are a good team in turnovers, one of the best in the country but there was 4 or 5 uncalled for turnovers tonight because they were playing sloppy.
Cats play next this Saturday 1/15 against LSU @4 eastern. LSU is currently 9-7, 1-1 in the SEC. They play on the road against Arkansas tomorrow before coming to Lexington. They don’t have any marquee wins so far this season, playing only one at the time ranked team #21 Memphis and lost by 9. They did hold Auburn to only 6 half time points; they only had 2 points in the first 11 minutes of the game. Auburn did go on to 49 in the second half. LSU won 62-55.
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