Cats win it in dominating fashion 82-44, after being up 48-19 at the half. Not quite as dominate in the second half scoring 34 to their 25 after Poole, Vargas, Hood and Polson logged more minutes.
Cats improve to 14-3, 2-1 in the SEC in front of a packed house of 24,330. UK is now tied with Florida and South Carolina for 1st place in the SEC East.
LSU and Florida were the last two undefeated teams in the SEC left and both went down today, so far a very tight race in the SEC.
Balance scoring for Cats tonight: Player of the game Knight led all scorers with 19, Jones-17, Liggins-15, Miller-15, Lamb-10, Harrellson-2, Vargas-2 and Hood-2.
Cats shot 29-70 (41.4%) from the field, 10-20 (50%) from three, and 14-18 (77.8%) from the line. Only three players for the Cats went to the line tonight, mostly by Terrence Jones. Jones went 11-14 from the line, Lamb 3-3, and Harrellson 0-1.
UK held LSU to a season low 26% from the field. Garrett Green came off the bench to lead LSU with 13 points.
Cats won the rebound battle 45-34, we had 10 steals to their 3 and only had 7 turnovers to their 15. Not a whole lot of fouling, Cats fouled 13 to their 17. No one for UK had more than 2 fouls for the game. White fouled out for LSU and Green had 4.
Cats were nailing threes left and right, showing them what they thought about their zone defense.
Play of the day for me was Brandon Knight’s drive to the basket and finger role layup off the front of the rim. You could just see the pure player he really is with that play.
Brandon Knight after the game: How did you start off so well? My teammates saw me and had good rhythm to knock down the threes.
What is different about your play at the point? Just being patient, not playing out of control.
How did you accomplish this? Repetition in practice, Coach Cal getting on me for things that I shouldn’t do, Cal letting me know what my role is.
Is it a different mindset of what you try to do offensively when you see a zone vs a man to man: Not really, our objective is to create for others no matter what they are throwing at us.
Two road games Alabama and South Carolina: I haven’t seen anything on either, we will be just ourselves, try to fight for each other and come out with the wins.
What did you take from the Georgia game? Just that we aren’t going to get any calls on the road and you have to play better on the road.
Cal after the game discussed how last year’s team had a us vs. the world mentality and this is still something missing from this year’s group. They need to fight harder for each other. He mentioned at Georgia, players were more focused on “getting theirs” vs winning. Something a young team has to grow out of to play like a team, not a group of individuals.
Cats now go on the road to Alabama Tuesday night. Bama is 10-7, 2-1 in the SEC, beating Miss. St and South Carolina and losing to Arkansas. They do not have a marquee win yet at this point, here’s to hoping this doesn’t change Tuesday night.
Then next Saturday we get our rematch @ South Carolina. Cats were #1 for the first time after beating Auburn last year, then went and lost @ South Carolina. The Gamecocks stormed the court after the w. Let’s have them storming for the exits this time around.
Go Cats! Beat Bama!
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