Kentucky's SEC opener with Georgia is a real "cat vs dog" battle: Cats fall 77-70
By Paul Jordan
The Kentucky Wildcats learned a valuable lesson today in their SEC opener against the Georgia Bulldogs: life on the road gets ramped up quite a bit. The big question heading into today’s game was “How good are these 11-2 Bulldogs”. Right now you can answer they are a pretty good team that will get better as they play up or down to the level of their competition. They beat EKU by just seven points, which made some UK fans (myself included) pretty confident about today’s match up, but the Bulldogs beat the 10th rated Wildcats today by that same seven point margin, 77-70.
The Wildcats found themselves on the short end of a 7-0 score just 2:20 into the game. Back to back treys by Doron Lamb and Darius Miller cut the lead to one, but the message was sent early that the Bulldogs were playing to win. The duo of Trey Thompkins and Travis Leslie pushed the Bulldogs back to a 16-11 lead and Kentucky battled back to pull within a basket or so, but could never catch the Bulldogs. The two teams battled on even terms most of the first half as DeAndre Liggins brought Kentucky to within 28-26. A few seconds later, Terrence Jones got his third foul of the game and went to the bench and Georgia took advantage of the situation. Trey Thompkins scored two baskets and former Kentucky recruit Marcus Thornton hit a trey to give the Bulldogs a 35-26 lead. Unlike Penn a week or so ago, the Bulldogs did not wilt under the pressure and actually went in at halftime with an 11 point lead.
Big props go out to Georgia for controlling the game in the first half. They played great defense against Kentucky, and they were masters of the bounce pass inside which allowed them to score almost at will when they needed a big basket. Kentucky for the first time in a long time looked leaderless and confused at times on offense.
The Bulldogs were stubborn on defense to start the first half and denied Kentucky any chances to put together any streaks and still held a 47-36 lead nearly four minutes into the second half. UK did manage to put together a run and Doron Lamb scored five straight points to cut the lead to 47-45. Terrence Jones then got a three pointer of the “and one” variety to give UK their first lead of the game, at 56-55, with 10:00 left in the game.
Kentucky picked a bad time to go cold as they lapsed into a 1-10 slump from the field, and it’s not like they were not getting good shots. On one series, Terrence had the ball go halfway in the basket and bounce back and Josh Harrellson could no convert on a putback. This streak of ineptitude lasted about eight minutes and when it ended, a Terrence Jones trey had the Cats down just five at 67-62 with 2:19 remaining. Kentucky could not get back into the game as they missed four treys in a row and Georgia iced the game with free throws.
Another key for the game was the Bulldog free throw shooting. They came into the game as the 11th ranked squad in the SEC, but they hit 30-334 free throw attempts for 88.2%. Kentucky got to line half as much as the Bulldogs and hit 10-16. But there were lots of reasons for the UK loss tonight. Bad shooting (38%). Bad rebounding (lost 37-34). Foul trouble (Miller, Liggins, and Lamb fouled out). And a return to bad transition defense.
No one on Kentucky was overly impressive. Terrence Jones had good numbers (24 points, 10 boards) but a lot of those came in garbage time. Doron Lamb had 18, but that was on 7-18 shooting. Josh Harrellson had 11 boards and just 4 points. It just seemed like the whole team was suffering from a post depression period after the Kanter ruling … but that should not have affected the team since Enes never played.
I’m not going to dwell on the loss anymore. Georgia spanked UK tonight, but in the big scheme of things, it’s a minor bump on the road. You are not going to go 16-0 in conference road and if you lose, it better be on the road. I expect to see a different result in three weeks when these teams hook up again at Rupp.
For complete game stats, go here.
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