#2 Cats take down USC Jr. 79-64 to improve to improve to 15-1, 1-0 in SEC play. Cats failed to cover the spread once again as they were favored by 20.5. A game that seemed to be UK’s for most of the way. There was never a point that I became concerned.
Jones played well as he led all scorers with 20 points, going 8-9 from the field. This was the 1st 20 point game for Jones since he scored 26 against St. John’s.
Great to also see Teague play much better as he scored 17, with only 2 turnovers and went 1-1 from 3.
Other scorers for the Cats: Davis-12 (double double with 10 rebounds and also had 7 blocks), Lamb-10, Kidd-Gilchrist-9, Wiltjer-5, Miller-4, and Vargas-2.
Two areas Cats did not perform well on. Rebounding which UK has dominated teams on did not happen today as USC won the battle 32-27. Most alarming is USC had 16 offensive rebounds to our 6. That is ten more possessions.
The other area was the amount of three hit. UK shot 5-11 (45.5%), not a bad percentage, just not that many attempted.
Cats shot 29-49 (59.2%) from the field, and 16-22 (72.7%) from the line.
Coach Cal after the game:
I thought we played pretty good defense until the last part where they scored 7 straight baskets.
I liked Terrence Jones, I told you it would take a week or two for him to get it going.
Teague played well. I read someone who said Teague is the biggest disappointment. He is only 15 games in. He isn’t the biggest disappointment to me. He is the best layup point guard in the country.
Now you have to play on another level. You don’t put your toes up and eat Cheetohs now. Do you want to go back to where we were?
Last year the reason we went to the final four because of Darius Miller. Think about him being aggressive with this team? Who is beating us?
Lamb didn’t step up today.
As for USC did you know what type of defense they were in? Don’t tell me you did because I didn’t. They do a funky man to man to zone thing.
How did we look against the press today? A little different? Good luck to any team that wants to press us.
(On Wiltjer) I thought he was terrific. This has never been done before, signing balls and doing the post game at once. I have to hurry and get out of her, I need to get to two games for two players for next year’s team (Poythress and Goodwin).
I thought Vargas did ok. You can’t be that guy going out there and not pushing it, you got to be that energy guy coming off the bench.
(on early timeout after being down 4-0) I’ve subbed all my starters before; I did that even in the NBA before that is probably why they fired me. I didn’t have five guys to take out on this team. I didn’t like how we started out.
Did you see Jones fly down the court today? If you run like that, you are being aggressive. If you are tough and aggressive on defense, you will be on offense. If you think you can be weak on defense and then turn into aggressive on offense, it isn’t going to happen. When we do this as a team, we are good. When we aren’t, it’s frustrating.
Cats next matchup is on the road against Auburn on Wednesday. Auburn is 10-5 with an 0-1 record in the SEC after getting drilled today by Vandy today 65-35, three days after losing to Florida St. by 29.
Go Cats!
No comments:
Post a Comment