Wildcats show glimpes of the team they are going to be, handle Morehead State 75-59

By now, John Calipari is used to “curbing the enthusiam” of the Wildcat faithful hungry for a Final Four appearance by warning them of bumps in the road and comparing the Wildcat’s progress so far this year to being at the “foot of a mountain”. If that is the case, the Wildcats tooks their first steps tonight in scaling that mountain of expectations and they would have to do it without their sherpa John Wall.

Without their sensational freshman, the Wildcats took the floor at Rupp Arena against the upstart Morehead State Eagles. There was a nervous buzz surrounding this team as no one really knew what to expect from the “half new, half old” squad that Calipari had assembled. In the end, it was “half old” and “half new” that led the Wildcats.

Patrick Patterson was magnificent for UK tonight with 20 point on 9-12 shooting with his first career 3 point three pointer. Patterson also helped bail out his team mates with 5 offensive rebounds and boards overall. While it will still take time for Patrick to fully accept his role in the new offense, he provided enough glimpses of sheer dominance to calm Wildcat fears. The new was Eric Bledsoe who dazzled the Rupp crowd with an amazing circus shot late in the game had 24 points on 7-14 shooting and added 7 rebounds.

Kentucky’s overall performance harkens back to the Calipari warnings about this team being a “work in progress”. This was a team that dominated Morehead on the boards 43-21, yet had 24 turnovers. It was a team that swatted 8 shots yet shot 21.1% from 3 point range. Newcomer Darnell Dodson had 15 points while Darius Miller ended the night with 0. Like they say, “You take the good, you take the bad, you take them all and then you beat a NCAA team by 16, it’s not so sad”.

The thing that I took from the game is that UK was absolutely dominate at times and they showed glimpses of the team they are going to be. UK won easily despite having just one PG tonight. The one thing missing of course was John Wall and pair him with Eric Bledsoe and you have a totally different team. This much was evident from the “Jekyl and Hyde” exhibition games. As good as Eric Bledsoe is, John Wall will make him and the rest of the Wildcats play that much better. And I have no real problems with UK’s performance. We did not get to see the real Cousins or Orton tonight because of foul trouble but they had their moments and we saw some glimpses of greatness there.

I expect the November road to be bumpy at times as this team gets to know each other and they continue to add chemistry. But we have to consider what the end result of this team will be. Yes, the Wildcats have started to scale this mammoth mountain of expectations and have ascended the first leg successfully. Now it’s going to get fun as we have our sherpa back.

For complete game stats and boxscore, go here.

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