03-05-2010, 03:06 PM
Micah Pearson March 4 at 9:59am Reply
Non game news:
-Continue to check out bigbluetopia.com for more extensive UK coverage. Iâm adding features daily. Today put up three slide shows of 200 picturesâ¦more to come.
-Duke goes down to Maryland tonight. Did Maryland seriously storm the court? I realize itâs Duke and everybody canât stand them but Maryland is ranked, you were at home, Duke is over rated and oh by the way youâre not Mt. Saint Maryâsâ¦you guys have won a title more recently then programs like UCLA, UK and oh yeah that Duke team that you just stormed the court overâ¦court storming is entertaining but it has become watered down.
-Happy Birthday to Tom Leach, he claims to be 21 today...itâs his birthday so I wonât disagree with that â¦
-The Slam Magazine UK cover pic is out. If you havenât seen it yet, you can see it with this report on bigbluetopia.com. Havenât heard if it is the next cover but I would assume so, putting a college basketball cover after college basketball is over wouldnât make a whole lot of sense.
-Good news and bad news came out on recruit Josh Selby today. The word is he is a Kansas lean but is closing the door on other teams not named UK, KU, UCONN and Arizona.
This really isnât news but just a public statement by his mom pretty much confirming this. I have been saying forever UK would likely get Knight and Selby to Kansas. As long as we get one of the two all things are good.
-Teague was supposed to visit UK soon but I believe for the 100th time he is canceling this visit because of another scheduling conflict. The good thing is he seems to want to wait until his senior year. This is good news with Pitino being in early on him and many believe Pitino would be gone by the time Teague plays college ball and that may be more obvious to Teague the longer he waits.
Game analysis: UK takes down the Dawgs 80-68. UK improves to 28-2 (13-2). Georgia was undefeated in against SEC East teams at home including a 14 point route over Vandy, while UK was only 2-2 against SEC East teams on the roadâ¦so it was a good win to pull out.
UK at least clinches a share for their 44th SEC championship. If we beat Florida or Vandy loses to South Carolina we will own it out right. We will still have the 1st seed for the East in the SEC tourney since we beat Vandy twice.
-Loved hearing more go big blue and blue/white chants. UK does this at every road game but it was
UK ended with 10 turnovers. That ties with the Florida game for the lowest amount of turnovers in SEC play.
Georgiaâs worse nightmare occurred; UK hit threesâ¦as we put up 8 threes tonight. Our last three games combined gave us a total of 8 threes.
The Bulldogs are very big which meant us dominating inside offensively and in rebounding was not likely. This game scared me just because I knew we would have to hit threes to win and that is a dangerous thing to ask.
For those who checked out bigbluetopia.com lately likely read my article on where in the world has Dodson went. I believe I saw some luggage behind the bench because Dodson has come home! He went 3-6 from three with no air balls with 11 points, no turnovers and only one foul. He had a good night and he will be big for UKâs success down the road.
Wall with another âIâm going to miss that guyâ¦â performance. He led all scorers with 24 points, going 8-10 from the fieldâ¦8-10â¦that is good. 3-5 from threeâ¦thatâs good too. 5-5 from the free throw line and well again thatâs good. That Wall guy isnât bad he might be good enough to go pro one of these daysâ¦
Patterson was given player of the game with 17 points and 10 rebounds. He received his 30th double double in his career passing up Mike Pratt. A ton of Prattâs numbers have been passed up this year. Mike isnât mindingâ¦
Our defense was tough late first half and that carried on into the 2nd half, we seemed to figure out how to handle them and played tenacious d until Georgia was pretty much out of it. They had a little late run with a senior McPhee going off from three but the closest they could get was 72-63 and we held them at bay the rest of the way.
UK put 14 blocks up on the stat board. Cousins with 6, Patterson with 4, Miller with 2, Wall and Orton with 1.
Our bench put up 17 points and this was big to our success.
Georgia outrebounded us 35-26. This was the most frustrating part of UKâs game in the first half. I knew they were bigger than most teams we face but many times we did not get the rebound because of how big they were, but the lack of blocking out your man. Severalâ¦several times UK bigs would turn blindly around at the rebound to get the rebound.
The problem is they are not physics and canât predict how the ball will come off the rim. If you block your man out then even if the ball does come right down in front of you, in most situations you are in a better position to maneuver to the ball.
Cousins and company did better at blocking out in the second half and received fruits for their labors. Georgia did not have an offensive rebound the entire second half. There was one play where we blocked out, Georgia clearly went over the back and ended up with the rebound. Calling over the back calls seems to be a dying breed with the refs; you have to pretty much knock the other guy down to get the call.
Speaking of bad calls, Wallâs âbackcourt violationâ call was horrid. That is one of those if we lose by one that would eat at me forever. Itâs not one of those is it a charge or a block type of calls; itâs one of those just blatantly wrong calls.
How did Wall not get a foul call when he got hit off the dunk and Wall fell. He clearly got hit in the air on the way down. You got to protect your high flyers. Wall by the way is right handed and that was a high flying left handed dunk.
Cousins did walk over and over when he dribbled in open court and it was never called so...
Miller continues to struggle behind the three going 0-5. Miller did do things well in other areas and that kept him in the game. Bledsoe and Cousins did not have great games offensively. Cousins ended with 6, Bledsoe with 5.
Calâs thoughts: Unbelievable defense. Start of the game was bad, offensive rebound over and over and after that they never got another one the rest of the game. Georgia scored 12 points early on from second shots and when we shut that down they had trouble scoring.
Wall ran the team, Cousins was a best in the second half.
Cal is still figuring this team out. Usually Cal at this time backs it up to avoid injuries but we are not competitive doing this and he changed this in practice this week. Our demise will not be defense or three point shooting. Our demise will be ourselves.
-Today going into the gym for shoot around Cal didnât like the walk of some of his guys. He hadnât mentioned anything about the SEC championship until he saw that and brought them over and reminded them what they were playing for tonight.
Cal has taken some heat for acting like he doesnât care so much about the SEC title, focused on #1 seed and the NCAA tourney. Cal is just used to the CUSA where a conference title really isnât impressive.
UK plays next on Sundayâ¦not Saturday against Florida at 12 eastern.
It looks like we will play the winner of Georgia and Auburn in our first game of the SEC tourney. Then likely play the winner of Ole Miss vs. Tennessee in the semi finals and if we advance likely play the winner of Miss. St and Vandy for the championship.
Continue to check out bigbluetopia.com. Go Cats!
Non game news:
-Continue to check out bigbluetopia.com for more extensive UK coverage. Iâm adding features daily. Today put up three slide shows of 200 picturesâ¦more to come.
-Duke goes down to Maryland tonight. Did Maryland seriously storm the court? I realize itâs Duke and everybody canât stand them but Maryland is ranked, you were at home, Duke is over rated and oh by the way youâre not Mt. Saint Maryâsâ¦you guys have won a title more recently then programs like UCLA, UK and oh yeah that Duke team that you just stormed the court overâ¦court storming is entertaining but it has become watered down.
-Happy Birthday to Tom Leach, he claims to be 21 today...itâs his birthday so I wonât disagree with that â¦
-The Slam Magazine UK cover pic is out. If you havenât seen it yet, you can see it with this report on bigbluetopia.com. Havenât heard if it is the next cover but I would assume so, putting a college basketball cover after college basketball is over wouldnât make a whole lot of sense.
-Good news and bad news came out on recruit Josh Selby today. The word is he is a Kansas lean but is closing the door on other teams not named UK, KU, UCONN and Arizona.
This really isnât news but just a public statement by his mom pretty much confirming this. I have been saying forever UK would likely get Knight and Selby to Kansas. As long as we get one of the two all things are good.
-Teague was supposed to visit UK soon but I believe for the 100th time he is canceling this visit because of another scheduling conflict. The good thing is he seems to want to wait until his senior year. This is good news with Pitino being in early on him and many believe Pitino would be gone by the time Teague plays college ball and that may be more obvious to Teague the longer he waits.
Game analysis: UK takes down the Dawgs 80-68. UK improves to 28-2 (13-2). Georgia was undefeated in against SEC East teams at home including a 14 point route over Vandy, while UK was only 2-2 against SEC East teams on the roadâ¦so it was a good win to pull out.
UK at least clinches a share for their 44th SEC championship. If we beat Florida or Vandy loses to South Carolina we will own it out right. We will still have the 1st seed for the East in the SEC tourney since we beat Vandy twice.
-Loved hearing more go big blue and blue/white chants. UK does this at every road game but it was
UK ended with 10 turnovers. That ties with the Florida game for the lowest amount of turnovers in SEC play.
Georgiaâs worse nightmare occurred; UK hit threesâ¦as we put up 8 threes tonight. Our last three games combined gave us a total of 8 threes.
The Bulldogs are very big which meant us dominating inside offensively and in rebounding was not likely. This game scared me just because I knew we would have to hit threes to win and that is a dangerous thing to ask.
For those who checked out bigbluetopia.com lately likely read my article on where in the world has Dodson went. I believe I saw some luggage behind the bench because Dodson has come home! He went 3-6 from three with no air balls with 11 points, no turnovers and only one foul. He had a good night and he will be big for UKâs success down the road.
Wall with another âIâm going to miss that guyâ¦â performance. He led all scorers with 24 points, going 8-10 from the fieldâ¦8-10â¦that is good. 3-5 from threeâ¦thatâs good too. 5-5 from the free throw line and well again thatâs good. That Wall guy isnât bad he might be good enough to go pro one of these daysâ¦
Patterson was given player of the game with 17 points and 10 rebounds. He received his 30th double double in his career passing up Mike Pratt. A ton of Prattâs numbers have been passed up this year. Mike isnât mindingâ¦
Our defense was tough late first half and that carried on into the 2nd half, we seemed to figure out how to handle them and played tenacious d until Georgia was pretty much out of it. They had a little late run with a senior McPhee going off from three but the closest they could get was 72-63 and we held them at bay the rest of the way.
UK put 14 blocks up on the stat board. Cousins with 6, Patterson with 4, Miller with 2, Wall and Orton with 1.
Our bench put up 17 points and this was big to our success.
Georgia outrebounded us 35-26. This was the most frustrating part of UKâs game in the first half. I knew they were bigger than most teams we face but many times we did not get the rebound because of how big they were, but the lack of blocking out your man. Severalâ¦several times UK bigs would turn blindly around at the rebound to get the rebound.
The problem is they are not physics and canât predict how the ball will come off the rim. If you block your man out then even if the ball does come right down in front of you, in most situations you are in a better position to maneuver to the ball.
Cousins and company did better at blocking out in the second half and received fruits for their labors. Georgia did not have an offensive rebound the entire second half. There was one play where we blocked out, Georgia clearly went over the back and ended up with the rebound. Calling over the back calls seems to be a dying breed with the refs; you have to pretty much knock the other guy down to get the call.
Speaking of bad calls, Wallâs âbackcourt violationâ call was horrid. That is one of those if we lose by one that would eat at me forever. Itâs not one of those is it a charge or a block type of calls; itâs one of those just blatantly wrong calls.
How did Wall not get a foul call when he got hit off the dunk and Wall fell. He clearly got hit in the air on the way down. You got to protect your high flyers. Wall by the way is right handed and that was a high flying left handed dunk.
Cousins did walk over and over when he dribbled in open court and it was never called so...
Miller continues to struggle behind the three going 0-5. Miller did do things well in other areas and that kept him in the game. Bledsoe and Cousins did not have great games offensively. Cousins ended with 6, Bledsoe with 5.
Calâs thoughts: Unbelievable defense. Start of the game was bad, offensive rebound over and over and after that they never got another one the rest of the game. Georgia scored 12 points early on from second shots and when we shut that down they had trouble scoring.
Wall ran the team, Cousins was a best in the second half.
Cal is still figuring this team out. Usually Cal at this time backs it up to avoid injuries but we are not competitive doing this and he changed this in practice this week. Our demise will not be defense or three point shooting. Our demise will be ourselves.
-Today going into the gym for shoot around Cal didnât like the walk of some of his guys. He hadnât mentioned anything about the SEC championship until he saw that and brought them over and reminded them what they were playing for tonight.
Cal has taken some heat for acting like he doesnât care so much about the SEC title, focused on #1 seed and the NCAA tourney. Cal is just used to the CUSA where a conference title really isnât impressive.
UK plays next on Sundayâ¦not Saturday against Florida at 12 eastern.
It looks like we will play the winner of Georgia and Auburn in our first game of the SEC tourney. Then likely play the winner of Ole Miss vs. Tennessee in the semi finals and if we advance likely play the winner of Miss. St and Vandy for the championship.
Continue to check out bigbluetopia.com. Go Cats!