Tuesday, January 18, 2011
Alabama 8 - 12 Kentucky (14:56 left in 1st half)
UK's defense has been pretty good so far, but they are giving up too many second-half points, which sort of undermines all of their hard work. Lamb has made two three's, which is the main reason UK is ahead right now.
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Alabama 13 - 15 Kentucky (11:21 left in 1st half)
ReplyDeleteThis is pretty painful stuff right now. UK is taking too many three's -- they're 2-6 from 3-land -- and committing too many turnovers.
Alabama 19 - 15 Kentucky (9;13 left in 1st half)
ReplyDeleteEloy Vargas has single-handedly given Alabama the lead. His bad pass led to a Tide layup. His failure to pick up a rebound led to another Alabama layup. And his poor defense led to a third Tide layup.
Meanwhile, UK keeps shooting 3's. They are now 2-8.
Alabama 21 - 17 Kentucky (7:52 left in 1st half)
ReplyDeleteJust like at Georgia, UK is getting absolutely pummeled on the inside. Alabama leads in rebounds 15-10, and 8 of their 9 baskets have come from within three feet of the goal. UK has got to try to hold on now, and now fall behind much more before the half.
Alabama 34 - 27 Kentucky (1:58 left in 1st half)
ReplyDeleteWell, this has turned into a complete debacle. Kentucky's defense has been horrible, it is getting totally dominated on the inside, and it is making way too many turnovers.
On the other hand, they're still shooting 3's. They're now 2-10.
On the whole, this has to be seen as a very disappointing performance. UK just doesn't seem to have learned anything from their experience at Georgia.
Alabama 37 - 30 Kentucky (Halftime)
ReplyDeleteUK was down 41-30 at the half against Georgia, and they're down 37-30 now. So they've improved by four points in two weeks.
Lamb -- the only UK player who can shoot on the road -- has 12 points. No one else has more than 6.
UK has been out-rebounded 18-14, and Jones and Harrelson look completely overmatched whenever they try to take the ball inside.
I predict a wild, frantic effort to comeback in the second half that ultimate drowns in a sea of Alabama put-backs and free throws.
One takeaway from this season, by the way, is just how extraordinary last year's UK team was. At times, especially during games played at Rupp Arena, you can convince yourself that Knight and Jones are as good as -- if not better than -- Wall and Cousins. But games like this is where you really see the difference. Unlike Knight, Wall was totally unflappable on the road, and was intimidated by anyone or anything. Unlike Jones, Cousins was strong enough to score in traffic against almost anybody -- even with two or three guys hanging on him. Those are huge differences -- the differences between guys who are ready to go to the NBA and guys are probably are not.
ReplyDeleteObviously, I meant that Wall was not intimidated by anyone or anything.
ReplyDeleteFor what it's worth, I don't think Alabama is a very good team. Anthony Grant is a good coach, and I think Alabama is getting better. But on a neutral floor, their lack of offensive skill would lead to a defeat against any good team from a BCS conference. They only have so many points against us because: (1) they've gotten a ton of putbacks, and (2) they're shooting much better than usual from 3-point range.
ReplyDeleteAlabama 41 - 30 Kentucky (18:45 left in 2d half)
ReplyDeleteOK, so now it's 41-30. So far, Jones has dribbled the ball off his foot and Harrelson has missed a dunk, while Alabama has a free throw and their fifth 3-point shot of the game.
Based on this performance, it's hard to give UK much of a chance on Saturday at South Carolina, much less at Knoxville, Nashville, and Gainesville down the road. This is all very, very sad.
Alabama 45 - 30 Kentucky (17:05 left in 2d half)
ReplyDeleteUK just looks completely shell-shocked. They just stand there and let Alabama dunk the ball over them. Calipari has already called two timeouts in this half.
I think the Cats just don't have any idea how good they actually are. They keep thinking that they can just go in and blow these teams out, and that's just now true at all.
Alabama 50 - 32 Kentucky (15:54 left in 2d half)
ReplyDeleteWell, this is my last report. I am extremely disappointed in UK's performance. To be honest, I don't see that the team has gotten any better since they played Georgia -- or since they played UConn, for that matter.
They have a tendency to go out in the first half and shoot a bunch of threes, and if those go in, they do well. But if they don't -- and they never do on the road -- UK is in big, big, trouble.
I will be very interested to see how they respond at Columbia on Saturday. This is the biggest challenge Calipari has faced since he came to UK.
Ferocious comeback, which I didn't think they had shown any indication of mounting at all.
ReplyDeleteTerrence Jones is a terrific freshman basketball player, and Coach Calipari is riding him really, really, really hard. I'm guessing this means that the coach has decided that this player is ready to be great right now and that his being great is pretty much UK's only possible avenue to the Final Four. So, as usual, I'm rolling with management on this one, but it seems to me to be a risky coaching strategy.
Jones, one of Ken Pomeroy's best players in the country, is coming off the bench for a coach who just absolutely berated him on ESPN last night. I don't know if that bothers Jones, but I know it would lose me (and a lot of other normal people). I'd sulk and pout and call Momma and start sniffing around about the draft, transferring, etc.
But, of course, Terrence Jones is not a normal person--he's so unnormal that, at 17 or whatever, million-dollar-a-year men chase him around recruiting him, and, even in that rarified air, he's even more unnormal still. It seems to me that Coach Calipari is putting all of his chips for this season on the bet that Jones, in the crucible that he's in right now, will turn out to be the unnormalest of all.
So, we'll see. Again, I'm rolling with the coach, but this is definitely risky--because if Coach Calipari is trying to get too much too soon from the freshman and Jones goes in the tank, what becomes of UK this season? 18-12, SEC-semis elimination and NCAA-tournament bubbling? And it's not as though Coach Calipari doesn't have a choice here. He could lay off the prodigy and appreciate his 20 and 10 a game, instead concentrating his wrath on Darius Miller and Jon Hood. That strategy probably leads safely to 22 wins, the SEC championship game and NCAA round of 32, maybe even 16.
It sure looks like a 25-, 30-point loss at Alabama without Jones last night. And while "no loss is a good loss" and blahblahblah among the unnormals who do things like actually compete for NCAA championships, all of the normals like me (and the nearer-to-normals like a lot of guys on UK's roster) know there's a heck of a lot of difference between losing by 20 or 30 at Alabama last night and rallying ferociously only to miss a buzzer three-pointer heave and come up 68-66 short.
BE GREAT, JONES!
I guess Calipari-Jones '10-'11 is starting to remind all of us of Paul Sanderford-Paulette Monroe '91-'92.
ReplyDelete