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.
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.
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