Liggins, Knight lead Wildcats to 97-66 exhibition win over Pikeville

With Enes Kanter absent from the starting lineup due to NCAA inaction, John Calipari saw this as an opportunity to give the Bluegrass a first real look a his famed DDMO, starting four guards and Terrence Jones in Kentucky’s exhibition opener versus Pikeville College.  Despite a slow start, which saw Pikeville holding a 13-10 lead about 6:00 into the game, Kentucky managed to regroup and put together a solid first exhibition game and delivered a  97-66   win over the stubborn Pikeville Bears.

Since it was an exhibition game, I am not going to try to give a play by play, but insteqad try to share some thoughts and views of Kentucky’s performance tonight.  As we mentioned, Kentucky had a starting lineup of Knight, Lamb, Miller, Jones, and Liggins.  Obviously Liggins go the start due to the absence of Kanter and he definitely made the most of his opportunity.

I know that it was just against Pikeville, but at times, Liggins was the best player on the court.  The DDMO is obviously an offense that benefits his style of play and he was a player born-anew with 18 points with 7-10 shooting.  Liggins also had 7 rebounds and did quite a good job of creating his own shots.  This was definitely the most polished that Liggins has looked as a Wildcat.

You can not ignore the game of Brandon Knight.  Knight had 22 points and sank 9-10 free throws.  When Kentucky was sluggish in the first half, Knight put the team on his back and carried them scoring wise.  Knight also had  4 rebounds and 3 assists and 3 steals.  It was not a huge night for assists as UK as a team had just 7 assists against 15 turnovers.  This obviously has to improve, but I am not going to complain about the first exhibition game.

Darius Miller had a very solid night with 21 points and 10 rebounds.  Miller still seems to get his points very quietly and gets them in spurts but you can not argue with the overall stat line.  And if there is to be no Kanter, Miller will be expected to rebound a lot more.  You can tell that Miller has bulked up and he seems to be a good bit quicker this year.

Doron Lamb also had a good scoring night with 16 points and 5 boards.  Lamb moves well without the ball and also is very good at moving towards the basket and finishing off drives.

The one apparent thing is that Kentucky playing the DDMO will result in a lot of fouls.  Kentucky shot a whopping 44-56 from the FT line, good for 78.6%.  UK started a lot colder from the line, but it was good to see that Miller (11-12), Knight (9-10) and Lamb (8-10) made Pikeville pay for fouling them.  All in all, it was not a terribly strong shooting night as Kentucky shot 44.8% on FG’s and just 9.1% from beyond the 3 point line.

Surprisingly, Terrence Jones struggled in his first exhibition and this is probably due to the fact he is not a true post player.  Jones was just 2-9 from the field and finished with 7 rebounds.  Jones also turned the ball over 6 times and got in early foul trouble.  There is no need to worry about Jones however.  Eloy Vargas only played 11 minutes, but I think he played pretty well for his time.  He finished with 5 points and 6 rebounds and 2 blocks.  I’d love to see more of a Vargas/Jones combination against Dillard on Friday night.  Also surprising to me was that Josh Harrellson only played 16 minutes, but he finished with 7 boards and 3 points.

And it looks like Stacey Poole and Jon Hood will still battle to see minutes.  Poole saw just four minutes and had 3 points and Jon Hood played 10 minutes but took just one shot.  It was good to see him grab a rebound and take it the length of the court and drive to the basket.  When Hood gets minutes, he needs to be more aggressive.  Jarrod Polson played two minutes and did not score.

Even though we have a new cast of characters, the Wildcats seem to work on the same thing:  turnovers and three point shooting.  All in all, 95% of all teams are going to struggle with turnovers in their first exhibition game, but I would think that we should look for more assists than turnovers against Dillard on Friday and an increased three point performance.

Granted, not having Enes Kanter leaves this team a little soft in the frontcourt, but as evidenced tonight the four guard offense can and will cause havoc with 56 free throws being shot.  But as you would expect, this version of the Cats is a work in progress.  I can’t wait till Friday to see how it evolves.

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