Doron Lamb sets freshman scoring mark in Kentucky's 89-52 win over Winthrop

photo courtesy of Lexington Herald Leader

It’s apparent that the Kentucky Wildcats have watched what has happened to the pre-season SEC East “favorites” Florida and Tennessee this week.  Florida stumbled at home on Monday against the Jacksonville Dolphins.  On Tuesday, the formerly 7th ranked Tennessee Vols lost their third game in a row, this time to the USC Trojans.  And the Kentucky Wildcats made sure there was no Wednesday Wackiness as they steamrolled the Winthrop Eagles 89-52 and set off for their Christmas break with a 9-2 record.

You had to feel for the Eagles as they really had no chance at all.  Terrence Jones, Brandon Knight, and DeAndre Liggins all nailed treys in the opening four minutes as Kentucky jumped out to a 15-6 lead over their visitors.  About that time, Brandon Knight landed funny going after the ball and the Rupp Arena crowd went quiet.  A few seconds later, Doron Lamb entered the game and for intent and purposes, the game ended at that moment.  Doron Lamb exploded for 32 points and set a new freshman single game scoring record at Kentucky.  The previous record was Jamal Mashburn with 31 points.  Turns out that Brandon Knight returned just a few minutes later from his injury and he scored 21 points to help key the rout.

I’m not going to bore you with a play by play today.  This was Doron Lambs game from start to finish.  Lambs stat line was close to perfection as he went 11-12 from the field, including 7-8 on three-pointers.  With his effort, Lamb joins some very hefty company.  He became just the fifth player in UK history to score at least 32 points in his first 11 games as a Wildcat.  Lamb places his name alongside Johnny Cox, Thad Jaracz, and Cotton Nash as the only other players to achieve this fat.  Louie Dampier did it twice.  In case you are wondering, Kevin Grevey and Bill Spivey hold the first year players scoring record wiwth 40 points.  See, it helps to have a highly paid stat guy like Corey Price on the site.

Brandon Knight is improving as a PG more and more each game as like I said, he scored 21 points.  Brandon also pulled down 5 rebounds and announced on the postgame show that he achieved a 4.0 GPA his first semester at UK.  Terrence Jones also had a muted 11 points and 6 rebounds.  Jones is becoming a special project of Calipari.  It’s obvious that Jones has great talent, but you can tell Cal wants so much more from him.

Today was also the first game that we saw Eloy Vargas take charge and flash some of his potential.  He had 8 points 3 boards, and 3 blocks in just 13 minutes.  True, it was against Winthrop, but hopefully all it takes is building some confidence under Vargas and he can deliver like this consistently.  Josh Harrellson had 2 points in 10 boards, giving the two headed center a 10 point, 13 board performance.  I don’t think Harrellson is as concerned about scoring, but if these two can keep in that double double range between them, Kentucky should be OK.

Seeing what happened to Tennessee and Florida, I really find no complaints in this game and think it is a good effort to close out the pre-Christmas part of their schedule with.  Kentucky gets a break over the weekend before welcoming Coppin State on Tuesday night.  In that game, John Calipari will attempt to tie Tubby Smith’s mark for best record through 50 games as head coach.  With a win Tuesday, Calipari would have a 45-5 mark.

For complete game stats, go here. 

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