Friday UK News: MSU Analysis and Cal's Comment Notes

UK beats Morehead 75-59 tonight…

UK women beat Boston University 92-58; they took it to Boston more than the guys did Morehead…



Check out the Sportscenter highlights along with ESPN's thoughts here.

-Overall I expected a 20 point win or so and if we don’t have that bad play at the end when the game was out of reach then it would have been more then 20. This is a team expected to win their conference and a team that played with Louisville last season and is pretty close to the same talent level this year as last.



Bledsoe had the best highlight for UK with that crazy drive and shot as he is falling, that was nuts. He had a great game, more turnovers then what he needs but with Wall he will handle the ball less meaning less turnovers.

Of course the alley oop dunk by MSU right after Bledsoe’s play was nuts…they had a ton of dunks and I don’t remember one dunk by us…we need lots of dunks!

Bledsoe ended with 24 tying Sam Bowie with most points scored by a freshman in their debut

I was glad to see Patterson be the enforcer we know he can be, he didn’t play like he knew how to play in this offense in the exhibition games. He got his 22 double double tonight.

Hood injured his hand and was on the bench with it wrapped up and Cal said before the game he would only play him if he had to.

Liggins did not play again and did anyone notice his warmup jacket was drastically different then all the other players? The others had their blue jackets on, the one they showed Wall in over and over in. Liggins had a white jacket on the left hand side. Is he even banned from the same warm-ups or what? He didn’t seem happy after the game…

Cousins did not have a great game but luckily we have lots of post depth to take care of this

Not great three point shooting; Dodson may be the reason why we are able to keep our every game with a three point streak alive…

Miller did not score…this is well unacceptable if he would like to stay in the starting lineup.

Most of anything else I have to say Cal commented. The following is notes I took from Cal’s interview. It is written as him speaking but it isn’t word for word quote, just easier then saying “Cal said” over and over and over. Tom Leach barely got to say anything in this, every once in awhile Cal would ask a short answer question to Leach, otherwise it was all Cal talking, he is just amazing at speaking as we know, I could listen to him talk every day.

One thing before I go into my notes is just a comment on a big philosophy he has and something he said. He said tonight he doesn’t mind the players making mistakes but wants them to learn from this mistake. I really liked hearing this because as many of you know I am a middle school teacher and this is what I tell them all the time. I don’t expect my kids to not make mistakes but I am more interested in what they learned from their mistakes then the actual mistake. Love seeing this philosophy from Cal.

These notes are everywhere; these interviews typically are not structured and they end up jumping around everywhere and this isn’t everything said but highlights

Cal’s thoughts tonight from his point of view:

I’m used to veteran players who play every play well and if they can’t then I get guys in there who can.

MSU is a good team because they are a NCAA tournament team but I expect more out of us. I saw Bledsoe separating himself and I liked this and Patterson did as well but we need to see more of this. Did I go crazy tonight? I did because I have to let them know what is acceptable. One thing that makes me the maddest is a ball on the floor and a player shies away from diving after it…you’re in the wrong gym son…go have a seat.
I’m here to win and if you can’t win then you’re going to have a seat that night, I still love you like a son but if you can’t help us win then you need to sit, I’m not being mean but I’m here to win.

Did you like us pressing tonight? You may not see this every game, we press when teams try to play slow but if a team is trying to play fast then there is no reason to press is there?

They played the zone the whole game and this was hard to play against at this point, later on we will learn on how to attack it but at this point this was a challenge.

I’m going to make Tom’s (Leach) job easy, he is only going to have to say “we have to take a break…” and then I’ll come back and talk some more…

(then later on that is exactly what happened and Cal goes “there you go, I knew that was going to happen…”)

Cal Continued:

I thought Harris played well not because of his offense but because of his hard nose defense

You have got to come out and have great pride and skill set to go out and play and tough it out. I thought Cousins struggled, Orton did well, and we need to see Stevenson do better.

It’s ok if you play bad, but you must learn from it.

A lot of defensive breakdowns gave up a lot of wide open threes. If our big guys will be big then we should be able to post up in man to man or zone and throw it inside and beat their brains in. If we need to drive to score then that is what we will do, if we need to post up to win then we will do that. I wasn’t happy with our bigs not playing big, harder to get the ball inside. You are 7 foot tall and the guy guarding you is 6’5…if they are playing big then this should not be hard.

We had 9 turnovers between Miller and Dodson and this needs to come down. I think we need to have about 11-14 turnover range because if it is only 5 then we are not playing fast enough, attacking and taking chances.

Players have to force the defenders to come up on them in the zone. If you get the ball in the ddmo and the defender doesn’t play you then they have two guys guarding one guy because you’re not being guarded. When you have the ball you must have the mentality to force them to play you, you must step up and attack and force them to either defend you or give up an easy shot. This is the key to ddmo, if you are out there and not willing to be aggressive and attack then you can’t play. You can’t just sit back and pass the ball around and not attack, you must be a scorer.

We are still good, no for sale signs yet in my yard since we won…no one is hollowing at the moon…

Well that’s it, we play Miami (Oh) who lost their opener tonight on Monday. Monday we will get the chance to see both Wall and Bledsoe play together…I don’t know if the Rupp floor can handle this, it is has never had two guards of this caliber playing together…

Go Cats!