[Cactus Jack]

Wish him the best in every game except those against Kentucky, but I can't think of a single player on any if Beard's previous teams that seems like a good comparison to Perry.

This was my thought as well. He wants athletic guards that are dogs defensively. He did have Sean Pedulla this year who somewhat fits the Travis Perry mold of being a smaller, shot first guard. However, Pedulla had already played 3 years, 2700+ minutes, and 1200+ points at Virginia Tech before coming to Ole Miss. He was already a finished product. Perry is going to have to fight for his minutes. Of course, his defense has to get better but for me the biggest area he needs to improve is just knocking down wide-open shots. If he can go from being a 32% 3-point shooter to a 40%+ 3-pointer he will get minutes regardless of whether his defense improves.

In the UK/Ole Miss game, we were without Butler and Pedulla started the game guarding Oweh (though they did switch almost everything). We started out with Oweh on Pedulla as well.

Once both were in, Pedulla did end up switching onto Perry but Oweh stayed on Pedulla.

I know it's not really fair to compare a freshman Perry to a senior Pedulla and that this is a pretty limited sample, but the expectations for two players listed at basically the same height and weight seemed pretty different. Seeing everyone standing side by side, I'd guess that Pedulla was underlisted, Perry was overlisted, or both.

If Perry turns into Pedulla, there'll be lots of happy Ole Miss fans and lots of angry Kentucky fans, especially after losses.