UK Postgame Wrap.. Blue Tinted Point of View

There is no doubt that UK will have to play better than they have so far this season once the competition stiffens. I have prepared myself to give this team until the New Year to place any level of expectation or heavy critique on the team. As Mike says, he is a realist. In most walks of life, I consider myself a reasonable and objective person. However, reality doesn't really come into play when I am viewing the Cats through my blue-tinted glasses. I realize there are a lot of things for the team to work on after this game, but I am going to leave that for Mike. Here are the positives I took from tonight's game...

The starters all got involved on offense. Of course we will need help from the bench against a tougher opponent, but it was great to see the starters all get 15+ points.

Boogie got loose tonight to the tune of 27 and 18. He brought great energy from the beginning tonight. Was great to see him get off to a hot start, and he pretty much kept it up throughout. If he can consistently stay out of foul trouble and bring this kind of energy he is going to have a special year.

Miller and Cousins carried us in the first half. Without their effort we would have been down again going into the second half. Looks like Cal's tip to Darius about shooting is paying dividends already. We need him to be a difference maker and he was just that tonight.

Bledsoe's outside shooting was a pleasant surprise tonight. If he can consistently knock down outside shots we are going to be REALLY hard to stop.

I know that Patterson and Wall had good stat lines, but both didn't play their A game and we still won. That is encouraging moving forward.

We scored 102 points! Our offense looked a lot better overall. We still have to cut out careless turnovers, but overall we played with a lot better pace tonight. That is what Cal worked on most coming into the game, and it showed tonight. I think this shooting performance tonight from Sam Houston State will get the attention on the defensive end. Every game we play we will be able to take a new lesson and apply it to the next game. Going in to game Coach wanted us to learn how to play a faster tempo and you saw that tonight.

IF we can start forcing opposing teams to take interior shots, we are going to really tough to score on. We had 12 blocks tonight with the other team taking 38 of 77 shots from behind the arc. We have to do a better job of feeding teams into our big guys for blocked shots. We are playing smaller teams that are built to make outside shots to make up for their lack of size. A more traditional powerhouse team might be able to match our size a lot better, but they won't present the same challenge as far as somebody making three's like these two teams have.

We just haven't had enough time to work on everything yet. It is easy to forget how inexperienced we are when you see that #5 next to our name. I have watched a lot of other top 25 this year, and most of them look sloppy and inexperienced as well. The season is young, and hopefully we can continue to get better.