2nd SEC test, same as the first, a little bit louder and a little bit worse

How tough is this team? A lot of folks that I talk to are saying that this group doesn’t have a killer instinct and won’t put teams away. Even though we aren’t killing teams early I think there is an element that is being overlooked. True Grit. That true grit that comes from working hard daily and putting personal glory behind your team’s goal of winning games. If you look at the last 3 games now, 1 against little brother and 2 against SEC opponents, and one in Gainsville each of those teams have come out shooting very well after half. Could this be the zone and press defense is slowing us down thus allowing those schools who perform better in the half court and rely on shooting? I think that might have something to do with it. Florida came out of the locker room after half shooting much better. The problem is that they had no where to go but up as they were having horrible shooting already. Just an assumption but our stopping their shooting wasn’t Cals concern this game. Getting 22 rebounds on our end and out boarding us in the 2nd half allowed them to stay in the game. I do have a couple of questions forming about this team. The first is that I seem to pick up on a mental block with a couple of players that seem to not be excited enough to be intensive and aggressive. You already know I am talking about Darius and Darnell. What you thought I was talking about Psquare? Read the last entry if you did.

On a level of general toughness and grit I don’t see them getting better than 3 of our guys, Big Cuz, Psquare and Jimmy (John Wall). Those guys duke it out with the best of the best on a nightly basis. Please remember this is the freshman laden team grinding a tough win out at tough venue. Bled-Bled has a little slack in his game but that has disappeared as of recent but Daniel Orton surely is showing signs of greatness, for the future, with his 3 consecutive blocks. To me it’s obvious with his great attitude and contribution until he gets his minutes that he is certainly comfortable in the back seat of the UK HellWagon coming to an SEC gym near you. I guess what it all boils down to is this group is not one of seasoned veterans but rookies. They might be the best prepared rookies in history because of the bubble they live in at UK or they just might be that good.

This is the 3rd consecutive game where in the 2nd half the other team shoots better than it did in the first half. Another somewhat convincing piece of evidence that points to this team letting let up on opponents after they sense the weakness and the ability to win over them. The only gothca that’s hard to see is that while the Gators were improving so were the cats. From the field UK got close to being great as their % from the floor was much better in the latter half as well. I do see our team as an improving team from the first half to the second in regards to field goal %s and actually overall with much better numbers recently in the second half. The immaculate UK fan I suppose requires something in which it should complain about. A good observation of this was at the Loserville game the UK fan behind me (not the season ticket holder but someone totally new) had to point out how bad UKs players were and do nothing but shout obscenities at the other team. All that his buddy would say is “you suck man” over and over again to Samuels. They chose to come to this great event and likely pay much more than the face value to make himself unhappy with the thing he likely puts right behind god & family.
Single handedly our rebounds and pts in paint won us this grinding match. We won points in the paint 50-28 and out-rebounded them in the second half. Simply put we had the advantage on them down low. With Cousins playing well Bledsoe just took over and couldn’t be stopped. His career night may have been because his grandmother was in attendance and I suggest that we get her to the rest of his games for the duration. He was mr. ice for the rest of the game hitting the coffin lids nail with his long 3 with about 4 minutes left then coming back down and hammering home an additional nail.

Its obvious we are everyone’s target each night as we haven’t really disappeared from the front running of the SEC in about 60 years. Whats not so obvious is there are going to be games and players that sneak up on us because we don’t know their staff as well as we should and get beat by an unknown “crazy” factor. It will be interesting to see if the opponents keep trying to spread, shoot from the perimeter and press/zone us like they have been. This is really only allowing us to take them out of their games. IF everyone is playing their best and we are simply “pawing” them as if to play with our food its truly scary how good we could actually be in two months. Very scary. 17-0 is great but 2-0 in the league is very important as well. Another road game in the SEC awaits as yet another test to this young group.

UGA: Welcome to the SEC (first edition)

It didn’t take very long to see that even with a mediocre record and few if any big names that Georgia came ready to play. Even as the cats were opening up their early lead DeMarcus Cousins found out what a mediocre SEC opponent can do to you. The nearly 7 foot freshman learned quickly that anyone can get dunked on, especially in SEC play. In Cousins defense however he was trying to do as instructed and not claim an early foul by setting up for an attempted charge. I’ll bet that is the last time a player from that far out will see Big Cuz setting up for the charge. From now on I think he will get the stop or the foul just not the way he did by getting posterized by Travis Leslie. Even John Wall could feel the heat off the play as Leslie was in the process of missing his free throw then getting his rebound, Wall was walking away from the center of the court right towards where we were sitting. You could see he was being sympathetic for Cuz but at the same time his face was saying “ouch, that burns to be him”. It was good to see that the big man wasn’t fazed and on the next UK set managed to take it to the rim, drain the basket, miss the free shot and then get his own rebound. It was truly a shame that he fumbled the ball away as it would have been a truly defining moment in the short career of this kid. For the rest of the game he simply tried to manhandle anyone under both ends basket and truly made UGA work for anything it got inside. That’s not to say they had some effect down low. For spurts we can see why UK is so heralded a team however there are other periods of play where we can almost agree with Cal on our 9-7 faux record. The first 10 minutes and the last 6 minutes of the game we handed UGA what we should be looking like for an opponent. Defensively smothering and at least better than average efficiency on the offensive set. The 24 minutes in between, we were outplayed and sadly with no sense of urgency from our team to stop it. The big thing for me was that GA wasn’t bad from the field in the first half. Actually they did better than most teams we played from the field, 3, and free throws. The bad news there is that they improved in the second half just like the most recent games we have played where the opposing team is hanging in there still. Trailing at half should have been a wake up call and it really wasn’t. The superior play of two players kept GA floating, one was obviously Thompson who I was really impressed with and the other was the “little white kid” who is actually Ricky McPhee. Thompson played very well and wasn’t intimidated at anything that the cats threw his way. 17 pts and 13 boards show he was the main front court presence for the bulldogs. He single handedly led the dogs as they out rebounded us in both halves. Little McPhee was killing us from the perimeter and was shooting most of his from 23 feet or further. Its one of those things where sure we should have been on him tighter but there is only so much room a double screen and a run out away from the position can be guarded from. If he had been at the 20 foot mark he would have been fed leather all day but instead he got out, way out and became effective. A lot of their long rebounds came from long shots but there isn’t a reason in the world why we should have been out boarded in this game. Specifically Miller, Dodson, and Ramon should be grabbing these shots but they arent looking for them. Perhaps its a result of playing on such a fast team that you are constantly looking up the floor.
In the long and short of it Big Cuz was on his game even though the rough down low play by Georgia was an attempt to unsettle him and take him out of his game. He did just the opposite, he handled nearly every pass with a soft touch while working his way to the shot. When you get double downed every time you are going to put the ball up be ready to shoot your free throws, and Cuz did just that going 6-9. He came up big with rebounds and scores as well as taking the ball away 7 times. Sitting in for a KY team that was shooting horribly was all that Cuz could do, he picked up his team and let Psquared do his thing on the other side and willed us to victory. There has been a lot of talk about this teams will to win (or not squander a win) while people tend to not think about us being an all freshman team like we really are. I don’t believe we are utilizing a true will to win but that we are just that imposing on the people we play. Its going to be hard for us to lose when we shoot more than the other team, but on this night we only had 7 more shots than our opponents. In the end three events played out in my mind over and over, it’s the soft pass in to a determined to score Cuz, it’s the headband being knocked off his head and defiantly thrown to the bench as if to say “lets get it on” and it most importantly while being enticed to participate in extracurricular activities under the basket and shrugging them off as to prove to the other guys that you are indeed better than them. Even though he is already huge, Cuz is growing in many ways. A big hand to DeAndre Liggins proving to the world why Cal kept him on his team by playing solid defensive minutes and getting 6 pts of his own that he helped create. It seems this young man is growing at an unknown rate as well. I am going to say this one more time here so I wont ever have to again, Psquare is gong to consistently night-in, night-out put up 17 pts and 8 rebounds. Does that mean he isn’t doing his part? What if he were doing more and taking away from his teammates? I would see complaints then as well. Scoring more isn’t going to improve his draft status, playing outside of his comfort zone well will. With John Wall getting all the credit for leading this team Psquared needs to stay in his zone and do his thing and he will be just fine. As for Wall isnt it a familiar sight to see JWall on the line late in the game sealing another W for the cats? If we dont have a killer instinct as a team at least our point guard has one. With their first SEC victory in their back pocket now we can indeed look ahead to Gainsville in hopes we can put a real hurting on the “reptards” as my baby girl puts it. Lets hope we can cool the shooting of the opponent and not allow the long rebounds or it will be a long night at FLA.
A big shout out to Wazoo sports again as they have been playing some ultra-classic games of the modern era of UK including the entire 96 & 98 championship runs. I wish I could buy stock in that network. Seeing Pittsburg Steelers head coach Mike Tomlin chillin with Joker made me want to try and come up with as many papaw brooks jokes as I could but for some reason I wisely chose to focus on the game. Getting to see Ashley and stand next to her during the half was also a blast from the past as she was the celebrity “Y”. And last but not least another shout out to my honey who is getting much better at photography as the season goes on.

Battle for the Bluegrass: UBFC 2010 (Ultimate Basketball Fighting Championships little brother edition)

45 Seconds is all it took, all it took for there to be 7 fouls in the game. Less than a minute into the game the freshmen had about all they could handle of an emotional and physically heated game without breaking out the meanies. There was the pre-game shoot-around where the cardinals could easily bee seen mouthing off to whoever they could as long as they were at the other end. Or it could have been Delk walking through UKs line as they were warming up or the pot shot that he took at Bledsoe as the teams went to their locker rooms before the game. On the other hand it could have been Bledsoe’s unwillingness to focus and not let those guys get the best of him. He was an active participant in the pre-game smack talk so much that he didn’t make it past 8 seconds till he was yanked. The emotion was in the air, on the sleeves and in everyone’s chest that felt 3 feet thick. Between the inexcusable banter between the players and their horrible shooting this game should be one that might be better forgotten except one thing, Kentucky once again was better and showed it. What was special to me is that my wife in all her 5 years of following the big blue finally got what its really like when these two teams get together. The scene wasn’t for the faint hearted as you could feel the elevated heart rates of nearly 25000 people. The anxiety, the pressure and yes the game itself really gave us that feeling that is impossible to reproduce with another opponent. A good friend that hasn’t experienced the UK-UL experience asked me what its like. My response is that for one afternoon, for about 3 hours you are at the center of the basketball universe. 51 fouls (5 of them technical) and 36% combined from the field later (22.6% combined on 3s) defense prevailed and the team with the best D won. That would be Kentucky, although I highly doubt an individual awards need handing out total team D was the factor. One can certainly say with confidence that the win won’t be remembered for finesse or style rather it will be inner strength and the will to win in an ugly situation. Another Rupp Arena record attendance meant that we had a huge presence off the court that cant be duplicated. I wonder what it felt like wearing red in that arena that day? Scratch that I wonder what it felt like being so intimidated by so many angry people? There are a couple big things that stick out in my mind from the rivalry game of the decade. First it Louisville not hitting a basket till 10:54 left in the half and their second shot at 5:49. Kentucky shut Louisville down in the first half only allowing 5 total field goals and making them miss their first 14 and only hitting one in over 15 minutes of play. The fact that UK turned them over 19 times is another aspect that has been missing. That’s amazing to me that no one has talked about this huge feat of dominance. What overshadows that is trash talking, fights on the boards for the rebounds and actual fights on the floor. Kentucky wasn’t exactly good either, they went almost 9 minutes without a score in the first half and turned the ball over too much to take the game completely over and put the cards down. The second half was plain ugly fight of the century style bball. What happens next shouldn’t surprise anyone on the planet, superman Jwall hit an identical shot as he did to win the UCONN game and that hammering he took while doing it set the spark that ignited his fire. UK went on a run and took control of the game. Even with more garbage play by Loserville. The garbage was that Jerry Smith would not give Wall position on the inbounds play twice by grabbing his jersey (I saw it with my own eyes). That encouraged Wall to try to run over Smith trying to get to the baseline. That was all before the ref even handed Patterson the ball to put it in play. In the grand scheme of the moment the technical seemed like a good idea based on the warning the refs were giving them to stop the extra-cirriculars. Otherwise that type of play had already happened for 30 minutes.While shaken from the early scrum DeMarcus Cousins showed us why he thinks he is the best center in the country. He used the low post as his domain and had 19pts and 18 rebs. Once UL hit the zone defense it slowed our(Cousins’) efficiency to nothing and a turnover led to the basket that helped Louisville take its only lead. That’s when the messiah John Wall performed another miracle run and show us why he is the best player in the country hands down. Cousins kept his emotions in check for the most part and capped the win with a monster dunk with 37 seconds left that hammered home the nail in the bird coffin. While ugly the two big things from this game was that we controlled the points from the paint and points of turnovers. Another words Calipari has taught this young bunch how to capitalize on their hard nose defense. Can you believe UK was outrebounded? A -1 in that stat means UK should have had about 10 more rebounds than they actually had. Once again the battle for the bluegrass was indeed a battle and in fact has re-heated this rivalry that seemed to be put in a leftover box and left in the frige. Being a part of the crowd in this moment for this team was a lifetime event and I am only happy that Codi has experienced her first “once in a lifetime" Uk/UL moment.

Top:Coach Calipari and Tom Leach post game. Bottom: Cal with former Gov. John Y. Brown who is the man responsible for the rivalry game tradition.

Cal and Rapper Drake with enterouge

The John Wall show continues... Hartford edition.

Solid play from everyone attributes to a huge blowout in a yawner of a game. It wasn’t even as if we missed Eric Bledsoe who sat out as result of a couple of ankle turns in a short period. The show was again John Walls to be had as he was dishing “Alleys” as he was calling them from the floor. Patterson, Orton, Cousins, even Wall himself got in to the alley oop business with his own rendition of a mid air spin(more or less a 360) reverse slam from the baseline. Needless to say everyone in attendance showed the love to wall, including my cousin Steven Hamblin from the Boyle Co area of Central KY. As far as I know it was his first game at Rupp and I was thrilled to have him along. John Wall broke Travis Ford’s 15 year old modern assist record with 16. He didn’t score but he didn’t need to by involving everyone. Good to see Dodson lighting the basket up and I still think the shooting from him and Darius may make us or break us. Fortunately we have DeAndre Liggins getting some PT as I have seen very good indications from the young mans actions that he is a team player. If perhaps he could knock down a couple 3s a game and relieve pressure from Darius so he could get that mid-range jumper that he is so good at. Kentucky roared to the half up 57-31 and the only drama over the final 20 minutes was Wall's pursuit of the assist record. He didn't disappoint. He drew within one before Kentucky coach John Calipari took him out with about 12 minutes to go. He returned with 7:53 remaining, tied Ford's record on a basket by Josh Harrellson then broke it a few moments later when he found Stevenson at the top of the key. We out scored, out paced, out rebounded and out hustled this smaller team. Apparently Joe B. was right when he said Cal isn’t being honest on how this team is progressing. Of course Loserville is ominously looming as some sweet revenge awaits. Hopefully John Wall can demonstrate the total control over the game he had tonight with the red birds. Lines worthy of note: Demarcus’ 19 pts & 12 rebs in 19 mins. Pattersons weak statistical night. Darius solid shooting. John wall dishing like he is a server at Red Lobster and Darnell not being afraid to shoot when he can hit. Orton had a solid 10 pts in 13 miins and I cant tell you l have more pride in any cat right now than DeAndre who had a solid 20 mins of play and was the defensive threat. looking forward to the next one, the big show with little brother. Sorry no pics I was chllin with Steve all night and didn’t care to try! 14-0, 15-0 on Saturday!

UK2K1: Short surprise from Long Beach State, Big-Cuz rolling heads from the LBC

The hangover is what the press types are calling this game. After a near championship style celebration just a couple of days earlier a lazy first half was bound to happen. Thank goodness the coach can speak with the team at half without the burden of being in public. Whatever it was that he said worked and I couldn’t have asked for a better turnaround from one half to the other. Most likely all these kids have Christmas break on their minds as their fellow students have been gone from campus for almost two weeks already. Between them being pretty good shooting from the floor and outrebounding us there is wonder why we were tied at half. They could have been up by 5 if it weren’t for the grinding defense of the cats. The late in the game run was made it apparent that the cats were acting like real cats by toying with their prey as they load up to pounce and take it out. Coming down the stretch John Wall showed yet again he is much more than a freshman point guard. He is a legend in the making. With Wall and Cousins hammering the LBS guys it opened the floor for other good things including making a defensive stand the last 11 mins. only allowing 7 baskets. If our D can grind down teams then we must consider being a more intensive team for 40 minutes rather than 10.
Big Cuz had a great game and the technical was due him for his immature actions. It makes me question whats going to happen next week when the dirty birds come in and make it much worse on him? Sitting because you cant control your emotions is something I am sure he will not allow himself to be bottlenecked by. The second half run was controlled by him although the guards were showing him the ball and he could have cruised more on defense. Good thing he wasn’t cruising because he kept the rim cleam of any shots during that spurt. It appeared to be motivated and focused basketball and we all know he is even better but we just have to be patient to see his real game.
Kentucky ended the game slow but managed to hit all their shots including a couple of great 3s by Bled-Bled and Jimmy (John walls preferred nickname). Once again the phenom freshmen willed the cats to victory. Our offensive effeceincy in the last 10 mins drastically improved our overall numbers for the night. We shot everything better in the second half as well as a +9 in rebs in the second half. What can you say about John Wall that hasn’t already been said? I will get back to you as soon as I figure that one out. It appears the bench is becoming more and more important as the minutes are finally being spread around and everyone is seeing some PT now. Another big shout out to DeAndre who keeps on making me believe with solid D and running on offense instead of walking. Although PP was a solid contributor with his umpteenth double double he appears to be sceding some of his real estate to the big man because of his position.
LBS is picked to win their conference so I believe this was a really good test for an opponent they likely know nothing about. 13-0!

UK2K: Celebration of a milestone.

The feeling was all mutual among all in attendance. It was love, the kind of love that you discover and from day one can’t get enough of. The former & current players and coaches, the Governor, and yes the little people were all in attendance, and in love. This is too simple to go on; Kentucky loves their cats more fondly than any other fan base out there. Is it because we have no pro teams in KY? Is it because the ones nearby are the Redlegs and the Bungles? Is it because during the winter in the mountains there isn’t a heck of a lot more to do than crank the radio up to Tom Leach and let him paint his mystic picture of our beloved team. It could be all those things or it could be fact that we have the best team and fans out there period. I take the latter.

This blog post will not be about how UK shut down Drexel and out toughed them in every category. It also won’t be about Cousins 18 pts and 13 rebounds in 14 minutes, or John Walls 16 & 7 assists effort, or Patrick Patterson getting only one rebound. While Ramon and Harellson had great games this wont be about that either. This is about Kentucky not the team, not the school, not the fans nor any single entity.

This is about the entire flock that recognizes their faith in something larger than they are. Together we are all a part of it whether we want to be or not. I suppose on some level we are lucky that Kentucky chose us rather than the other way around. While the competition was weak the feeling in the building wasn’t. I suppose the love was simply pouring out of the 11th largest crowd to ever see a Kentucky team in Lexington.

Free throw choice? When Eric Bledsoe was injured while driving to the basket and getting fouled early in the 2nd half. There was a moment of humor between friends and rival coaches. Buster Flint Drexel’s head coach was obviously confused as he wasn’t aware that Bledsoe was going to the bench and someone else would have to shoot his free throws. Calipari yelled “Hey Buster pick someone to shoot” as a shoulder shrugging Flint didn’t understand. The refs ran over and asked him to pick someone

Calipari looked down to him again and held up his hand with all digits sticking outward signifying (and saying under his breath) “Five”. He was trying to get Flint to choose Harris which I am not sure but may have been UKs worst free throw shooter this year. Buster shrugged it off again and chose Cal’s recommendation as Harris walks up and misses the free throw. The two longtime friends shared a long laughing glance as you could know that the 46 point lead was on both of their minds.

Apparently during Cal’s post game interview with Jenine Edwards, Codi (she actually waved to the camera) and I were on TV the entire time. How funny when you see yourself on national TV like that. I have a picture of me and I have a picture of the camera taking my picture.

Of course my hero Joe B was great to see & hear as well as he was obviously emotional about what he was telling us when he said that Cal has been sandbagging us all season as to how good this team is progressing. Seeing Herkey Rupp, who sits in front of me, go out to the floor to be with and speak to the team was great. Here's a pic of Cal & him greeting each other. Seeing the Jamal Mashburn back in Rupp since his senior night was special as well as he was an analyst for this game for ESPN.

Pp showing us he is the certain leader in this group really did a great job of including the Keightlys in his speech. The after party was an incredible feeling that I imagine happens when you watch your team cutting down the nets in April.

Overall the game was a bore but the celebration soon made us all forget just how badly UK beat this team down and for a moment not worry about being undefeated still. The celebration atmosphere was something that I will remember for a long time. There is a certain routine or proxy that happens for games and to be out of that routine with a packed house (11-th all time largest crowd) in Rupp was quite unique. It was a love fest, a real love fest between everyone there. I was thrilled to be there with my wife as she really has only been a blue bleeder since about 2004. I know it will be a memory I cherish for a long time. All around it’s hard to describe the atmosphere past the feeling of exhilaration and love for one thing, Kentucky Basketball.