Kentucky 87 - 63 Portland (No. 2,058)

Some Kentucky fans may be disappointed in the Cats' performance tonight, and may wonder how a team that won by 48 points the other night was up only 43-37 early in the second half. But Portland is a much better team than Radford. According to Ken Pomeroy, Radford is the 322d best team in America. Portland is number 164. That's a big difference. In fact, this game played out almost exactly as Pomeroy expected. He had UK winning 85-57, and they actually won 87-63. If the Cats had made one fewer basket, and Portland had missed two more three's, he would have had the score exactly right.

And, in fact, if Portland hadn't shot so well from the outside, the score could have gotten a lot uglier. There were several possessions where Kentucky played great defense for 25-30 seconds, only to see Portland nail a three late in the shot clock. The Pilots were 11-23 from three-point range, and it's always troubling to see the Cats give up so many three's. They did it several times last year -- but their three-point defense came through at the end of the season.

The Cats did all right from three-point range themselves -- they were 7-17, which is pretty good considering that Lamb didn't make any. Miller had a great game, with 19 points and 5 rebounds. Other Cats in double digits included Jones (19 points), Teague (14 points), Davis (13 points), and Kidd-Gilchrist (11 points). I should also point out that Teague played what was probably his best game of the year, as he was much more under control and eliminated the silly turnovers he had been making. For me, the biggest concern about UK's performance is that they were out-rebounded for much of the game, and they only out-rebounded the Pilots by 36-35. But it's the Saturday after Thanksgiving, and I can understand why the team would have been somewhat flat.

However, we now have three very big games coming up: (1) home on Thursday night to St. John's; (2) home on Saturday afternoon to North Carolina; and (3) on the road on December 10th to Indiana. After those games, we'll know a lot more about what kind of team we have.