Cats win 85-72 over #23 Vanderbilt. Kentucky improves to 20-1. Now tied with Vandy for first place, but if this was the end of the season we would get the 1 seed in the east since we beat Vandy. So in my mind that means we lead the SEC.
Doesn’t it feel good to get that sour taste out of your mouth? It seemed like forever since we played last and it was great to win today. It also doesn’t hurt seeing Duke get blown out, Louisville giving up a huge lead to fall as well and seeing Texas lose as well.
This was the fastest UK has gotten to 20 wins in its school history. That is an impressive feat. Wall and Cousins broke some freshman record. Wall broke the UK freshman record for most assist in a year and Cousins broke most double doubles by a freshman today as well. I will be surprised if any positive UK freshman records are not broken by those two by the end of the year.
This was also a big win for UK for national attention. UCONN lost today and they will fall out of the next top 25 poll. North Carolina already has. That being the case, if we had lost today there wouldn’t have been one single win on UK’s schedule over a current top 25 team. With Vandy’s big win at UT they will likely remain in the top 25.
History was on our side. No time in history has the team who was ranked number one lose five straight. KU lost, then Texas became number one and they lost two straight, then UK took over the spot and lost…four straight losses by the number one team but we kept the streak alive by not making it five.
UK will likely be third/fourth in the new poll unless Kansas loses tonight against Kansas St. If Kansas wins then: KU #1, Villanova #2, Syracuse #3, and UK #4. Syracuse barely beat a bad Depaul team today but they just blew out Georgetown and Georgetown blew out Duke today. That will likely trump UK’s big win over Vandy.
Some may argue all of those four have one loss, so why do we drop to the fourth spot? The tie goes to who has done the most lately. We were the latest lost so the polls typically drop you behind the rest.
Lebron James in the house today. Many of the UK players had Lebron James Nike shoes on today and this may have been part of his reason for being in the building. He is a UK fan thanks to his relationship with Cal. The Cavs also played at Indiana yesterday allowing his trip to Rupp today to be an easy one.
Teams many times get the day after games off, so it was all in all a good time to come for him. He was supposed to come earlier in the year, I believe it was the North Carolina game and it didn’t work out that he could make it.
C.J. Leslie was apparently there as well, several reports came out he would be in attendance, haven’t heard any talk on sittings as of yet but that is the word.
I would be surprised to hear a public verbal from him. The word is he has already committed to UK but wants to make it public via ESPNU. He was at both N.C. State’s games this week, so to me even if he has told Cal that, he isn’t committed or he would make it public and not allow other schools to recruit him like that…but that’s just my opinion.
The game was pretty much ours out of the gate, we did allow them to cut into the lead some in the second half but they remained down by double digits the entire second half.
The player of the game in my book was DeMarcus Cousins, yes he got in foul trouble including a technical but he is a monster. He ended with 21 pts, 6-10 from the field, 9-13 ft, 10 rebounds, 2 steals, 1 block and 1 assist.
A stat that doesn’t show up in the box score is how many times he scored and was fouled. This is big for your post players to finish when fouled because not only does it allow for a three point play instead of two free throws but it allows your bigs to not spend as much energy shooting free throws. Down the stretch the last thing you want is your post players too tired to be effective.
On top of that, Cousins ability to get their post players in foul trouble and keeping Oglivy on the bench was big. It was definitely a foul fest throughout.
Vandy fouled 29 times, UK 28 times for a total of 57 fouls. That is the most fouls called in a UK game this year. That wasn’t the most UK has been fouled this year, Louisville fouled us 30 times but we only fouled them 21 times for a 51 total fouls…six less fouls then in today’s game.
Cousins needs to get some love for player of the year. When national media mentions POY they only mention Wall for UK but if Cousins and Wall continue to play the same as they have so far in SEC play, I would give the nod to Cousins. Wall is amazing player and will be the first pick in the draft but Cousins may be a better college player.
His dominance inside is not being matched by any big in the country. He didn’t start off playing at the level of Wall but since SEC has started he has been dominate.
Dodson had the start today. He was given the official player of the game. Dodson claimed after the game Cal wanted him to start to stretch the defense out allowing it to be easier for the post players. He did well shooting 4-8 from three, with a total of 16 points.
UK hitting their threes was big, games where we are dominating inside and hitting our threes makes us one tough ticket.
For the most part everyone played at least decent today. Miller and Orton were the two exceptions in my opinion. Miller played only 8 minutes and did not score. He continues to have an on or off switch, either a solid game or a game where he does very little and Cal pulls him when he sees him playing like that.
Orton I can’t state how well he is doing on defense, there were times he missed his man and Vandy scored easily but defense overall is a tougher thing to truly have an opinion on but his offense is a liability. He went 0-2 from the field, 1-2 from the line with two turnovers. There was an alley oop to him and if Cousins would have missed that I would have been mad but with Orton he hasn’t shown that he has good enough hands to handle that.
Orton is likely our future at UK with Cousins being one and done. It is important for him to develop and be ready to take over when Cousins departs.
UK plays next at home against #20 Ole Miss. Ole Miss comes into Rupp Tuesday 16-4, 4-2 in the conference. Their two conference losses to UT in over time and Miss. St. They were suppose to play Arkansas today but it was postponed because of snow until tomorrow. This will allow UK to have more rest going into the game.
Cal’s thoughts after the game: When asked what he liked best about UK his response that got a cheer from the crowd was, “They won…that is what I liked best.” He is such a Wildcat…
Concerned how his team would respond after getting beat and they came out and took care of business.
Cal mentioned that Cousins made a mistake for getting the technical but also complimented him for not responding when he got elbowed in the face.
He called Cousins a beast and said if you look up beast in the dictionary you will see a picture of Cousins with those glasses on smiling.
He mentioned how dumb it was for some UK fans blaming Obama on the loss, there is a Facebook group out about that and that is just laughable and makes UK fans look illogical…if you support Cal and UK and are a member of that group leave. Cal mentioned that when Presidents calls you take that call, enough said.
Vandy only had 3 offensive rebounds; South Carolina not a great rebounding team had 20 offensive rebounds. Cal said it’s an effort thing and I would definitely agree with this.
Cal claimed he got out coaches and Cal should have called more timeouts during the South Carolina game because of how young we are and he put too much responsibility on the freshman to figure it out.
Cal didn’t know Lebron was in the crowd during the first half. He mentioned we are the only program wearing Lebron’s shoes.
This is a great recruiting tool by the way. Kobe and Lebron are the two biggest names in the NBA today and neither one prior to this season had a college who claim them as “their guy” because neither one went to college and neither one ran around claiming to be a huge fan of one single program. I’m sure Kobe has some love for California college programs but that doesn’t seem to be very public if he does.
Now that Lebron is on the UK bandwagon and shows up on ESPN wearing UK colors how many recruits out there are impressed by UK because their icon is a big fan? I’m guessing a bunch.
Cal mentioned Cousins leads for most points and rebounds per minute. His numbers of course down for the game because of his minutes on the bench in foul trouble.
It’s great to be a Cat! Go Big Blue!
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