-If you would have told me this time last year that in a year UK will be undefeated at 19-0 and North Carolina would be unranked I would have laughed in your face…but that is where we are at. Rankings will be coming out and that is what will occur thanks to North Carolina falling apart despite all their McDonald’s All-Americans, thanks to Texas losing two straight and thanks to UK dominating Arkansas yesterday.-I was very excited about yesterday’s win not just because we knew if we won, we would be #1 for the first time since 2003. My excitement came from the fact that UK went out and ran them off the court with a final 101-70 score. This was the worst SEC loss for Arkansas since joining the SEC in 1991.
This is something that we knew they could do with all that talent but something we haven’t really seen against any SEC school.
UK has been knocked for playing down when faced with teams not as talented and having to play clutch at the end to win. The consensus is, if we continue to play that way, some team will be unstoppable at the end and will beat us.
The key for UK is to put teams away early like the Arkansas game went. Arkansas went on a little run in the second half and we missed shot after shot but the bottom line is…it didn’t matter. We already put them away and at that point it, we can afford for a team to get hot because the game is out of reach.
Yes Arkansas is not a great team and they looked awful yesterday, missing dunks and layups and could not rebound. Remember though, this team almost beat Texas. Part of them looking horrible is a testament to our defense to shut down guys like Clarke.
If you look at the rest of the schedule there is some tough games, UT twice, Vandy twice, Ole Miss, Miss. St., etc. We are better then all of these teams and if we lose any of those games it will be an upset.
Will we lose? More than likely yes, anytime you hear an ESPN say that we will, don’t boo them because you know deep down you think so as well. If there is any chance of us going undefeated then UK will need to play with the intensity they brought Saturday.
Do we need to lose to have a better chance in the NCAA tourney? Most seem to buy into this but unless the team is practicing with an arrogance and don’t believe they have much to learn then yes we need to lose but if Cal is able to keep them humble and desiring to be better and better than no we don’t need to lose.
An interesting stat to keep in mind though, Cal has taken two different programs undefeated to the final four: UMASS and Memphis and neither team came home with the title…but the question is would they have if they had lost in the season? Who knows…
Cal has been aware of this problem of not playing for 40 minutes and told them in practice that when they play like that, they are going to practice as if they lost. This means a meaner Cal and longer practices. UK came motivated Saturday, was it because of the tough practices, having a week off, or being number 1? That isn’t clear but whatever motivation they had, if they can continue playing with full intensity, we should all have big smiles on our faces because it’s going to be fun down the stretch.
We play at South Carolina Tuesday at 9 eastern on ESPN. South Carolina comes in 11-8, 2-3 in the SEC. South Carolina was expected preseason to possibly be a dark horse in the SEC. Then they lost two of their starters to some injuries and off court issues and expectations went down.
They still have Devan Downey who is averaging 21.9 ppg. We all have seen in the past how good of a player he is and it is at South Carolina. South Carolina is a tough place to play, their fans are like us very passionate about their team and usually have some personal attacking chants directed at our players and coaches.
We can only hope UK will feed off this but like Florida, South Carolina’s home court typically takes an average team and makes every game a battle. We will need to take South Carolina out early and take the crowd out of it.
All of South Carolina’s non conference loses were away, which means they were undefeated at home in the non-conference (7-0). Now granted they didn’t play a slew of talent at home. Non conference they played only one ranked team and that was a loss to Clemson on the road. In the SEC they haven’t faced the top talent either, so hopefully they will not be prepared for the talent UK will bring.
It took a last second shot by Florida’s Parson to take down South Carolina, so you would expect them to come in angry wanting to “bounce back” from that (Downey you can pick up Coach Cal’s book on this at your local book store, please do not read until after Tuesday though…thanks).
Bottom line we should win but we should win all of the SEC games but that doesn’t mean we will…so we will see if UK comes to play or if they will come in over confident being ranked #1 for the first time.
Many of you remember South Carolina blowing us out at South Carolina last year and hopefully guys like Patterson, Miller, Stevenson, Harris, and Harrelson let the rest of the team know how bad they want revenge on Downey and company.
I’m predicting a 15 point win, 80-65.
-In recruiting, I’m hearing good things about Leslie but it sounds like he may not want to make anything public until he announces on ESPNU. ESPN is pushing big recruits to announce via the U to help boost this station. Guys like Irving, Harris, Payne and our commit Poole have all went the ESPNU route of announcing their decision. Leslie seems to want to do the same thing and there is no current word on when he will make it official.
It’s great to be #1! Go Cats!
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