Cal's Cats: We beat the Heels addition!

-Wow, was that fun or what? Well, the first half was, but I wasn't having much fun in the second half; just ask my wife who had to put up with me.

UK improves to 8-0, best start since the 92/93 season.

All we need to do now is go 4-6 in our next ten games, and we still beat North Carolina to 2,000 wins! The UCONN game is really the only game that is in our path that poses a legit threat. If we beat them Wednesday, then we would be set to hit the 2,000 wins mark at home against Drexel on Dec. 21st.

Lebron James was rumored to be at the game today, and I believed it to be true when Matt Jones reported on his site kentuckysportsradio.com that he would be there. He later took this post down. James apparently wanted to come but plans did not work out to make it. Hopefully he makes it to Rupp for our big game against Louisville since he has a game in New Jersey. The Cavs don't need James to beat the Nets!

Anyway, how good does it feel for UK to finally beat North Carolina again?! In the past few seasons, we knew we were not at their level and we would just be happy if we didn't get embarrassed, but not anymore. We showed what it means to recruit top athletes and to be able to do what we did in the first half against a top 25 team.

John Wall is vital for us at this point. Bledsoe does okay, but we went on such a big run with Wall doing his thing, both scoring or assisting. Even Miller and Dodson’s threes in the first half can be contributed to a fast break and everyone collapsing on Wall leaving them wide open. Driving and scoring is DDMO. Then, if they collapse on you, you kick it out to the wide open shooter for three. We should be seeing quite a bit of that under Cal.

I expected this game to be close but not in the way it turned out. We matched up well with North Carolina. Their bigs are key for them and we were able to handle them for most of the game.

How big is it now that Orton didn't decide to go elsewhere after Cal came on board? He didn't come in and go off offensively, but having both Cousins and Orton allows our post to have ten fouls instead of five. Harrelson played a few minutes but when he did, North Carolina tore us up inside. They were battling for every block and rebound and Harrelson just could not play on that level.

Our big guys getting into foul trouble did allow North Carolina to do much better in the second half, allowing them to score inside. Even when Orton and Cousins were in there, they were forced to play "softer" to avoid fouling out.

To me this game was a steal. With this young group I expected some losses early on and by tourney time we would be good to go. This may very well be our toughest game all year long...UCONN is good but they didn't show it against Duke. We will see how they look Wednesday. Mississippi St. has a chance to be good if Sidney is able to play. Louisville will be a good game just because of the rivalry, but they are not as talented as the Heels either. UNC was the most talented team on our schedule, in my opinion.

It's a wonderful day to be a Cat fan! Go Big Blue!