Kentucky Basketball Preview – Know Your Enemy: Georgia Bulldogs

GAME 20

January 29, 2011, 4:00 PM

Rupp Arena – Lexington, KY

GEORGIA BULLDOGS  14-5 (3-3)

TV – ESPN

Series History

Kentucky leads  112-25

Recent Games

1/8/2011:  Georgia  77  KENTUCKY 70

3/3/2010: KENTUCKY 80 Georgia 68

1/9/2010: KENTUCKY 76 Georgia 68

3/4/2009: Georgia 90 KENTUCKY 85

1/18/2009: KENTUCKY 68 Georgia 45

It’s redemption time for John Calipari and his Kentucky Wildcats as they prepare to face Mark Fox and his Georgia Bulldogs for the second time in three weeks.  In the first game, Georgia defeated the Wildcats 77-70 at Georgia.  That game was a bruising, physical game in which the officials let them play and frankly, the Wildcats were pushed around.  Trey Thompkins had 25 points and 7 rebounds and Jeremy Price grabbed 10 rebounds.  The Bulldogs surged to an 11 point halftime lead and used stellar free throw shooting down the stretch to put the Wildcats away.  Darius Miller, DeAndre Liggins, and Doron Lamb all fouled out of the game and Kentucky shot just 38% for the game and was outrebounded by the Bulldogs 37-34.

Fast forward three weeks later, and the Bulldogs are reeling, losing three of the five games since that win.  They are 3-3 in the SEC and with a loss, risk falling out of the SEC East race.  They are 1-1 on the road in the SEC, with a road win at Ole Miss and a loss to Vanderbilt.  In the Vandy game, the Bulldogs fell down by 8 in the first half and never recovered the rest of the way,  One only hopes that a rowdy Rupp Arena crowd can be a huge home court advantage for the Wildcats.

THE STARTERS

#22 – G – GERALD ROBINSON – JR – 6’1 – 165

13.7 ppg, 4.2 apg, 2.7 rpg

#1 – G – TRAVIS LESLIE – JR – 6’4 – 202

15 ppg, 7.3 rpg, 2.6 apg

#3 – G – DUSTIN WARE – JR – 5’11 – 182

7.6 ppg, 2.8 rpg, 3.8 apg

#33 – F – TREY THOMPKINS – JR – 6’9 – 247

17.6 ppg, 7.4 rpg, 1.5 apg

#50 – F – JEREMY PRICE – SR – 6’8 – 264

8.4 ppg, 4.7 rpg, 0.6 apg

BACK COURT

As we saw in the first game, Gerald Robinson is a clutch player for the Bulldogs as he scored 17 points and sank 9-10 free throws, some down the stretch.  He did not have a great shooting game versus Kentucky, going 4-10 and missing both his 3-point attempts.  Since that game, he has hit 56% of his treys and has averaged 16 points.  Kentucky needs to watch the cheap fouls on Robinson as he has proven he will make them pay.  Controlling Travis Leslie is once again going to be a top priority for Kentucky.  The Wildcats held him around his average (15 points, 8 boards) in the first game but he has been averaging 18 points a game since then.   Leslie is the best athlete on the Bulldogs, does not get in foul trouble a lot, is a good rebounder,  and is solid at both ends of the court.  He has been in a season long three point slump (23.8%) and one hopes he does not get too many looks on Saturday.  Dustin Ware kept the UK defense honest in Game I by hitting 2-4 treys and Ware represents the most consistent Bulldog long range threat at 41.7%.  Ware is also an excellent ball handler with an A/TO ratio of 3.84.  Ware recently had a four game stretch where he had 24 assists versus 0 turnovers.  Kentucky must make sure to keep tight pressure on him to prevent him from finding Trey Thompkins all day long.  Sharrard Brantley only played two minutes versus UK three weeks ago, but he has been getting more minutes lately and has hit 7-14 3-pointers over the last four games.  Despite that, he is still averaging 3.8 ppg on the season, but the last four games he has averaged almost double that at 6.25 ppg.    Brantley also filled in admirably against Florida when he was called on due to foul trouble. 

FRONT COURT

Terrence Jones has made it his personal mission to stop Trey Thompkins and this will be a very interesting battle to watch.  Despite the 25 points and 7 boards he managed against Kentucky in the first game, he also stepped it up in clutch time by sinking 11 of 12 FT’s.  That’s especially impressive since Thompkins is hitting 68.9% on his FT’s for the season.  If you remember, Thmpkins was coming off an injury earlier in the year and he keeps getting better with two doubl
e doubles since the Kentucky game.  Thompkins is going to be physical and throw his weight around, but you would hope that Jones learned something from round one and will be ready.  Jeremy Price has been saving his big games for Kentucky over the last couple of years.  He had his best rebounding performance of the season in Athens with 10 boards and since then has averaged just four boards a game since then.  He has picked up his scoring a bit, but he has been missing a lot of easy shots lately.  Price is the enforcer and he will bang and try to get away with as much as he can, but he has been in foul trouble in four of five games since the UK game.    Chris Barnes is going to chew some minutes in the front court and he can get physical, but he’s not a huge threat to break loose.  He’s averaging 3.9 points and 3.9 boards a game.  Former Kentucky recruit Marcus Thornton is getting about 11 minutes a game and averages 1.9 points and 2.2 boards a game. 

OUTLOOK

Georgia has a good team, no doubt, but there is plenty of reason to think that the game at Rupp will be different.  Georgia, a notoriously poor FT shooting team hit 30-34 to sea the win over Kentucky.  Kentucky only had half the FT attempts at 16.  That’s a huge disparity.  Who knows what kind of a game the referees will call on Saturday, but you would say that if a even game was called, Kentucky would have won at Georgia.

This game will be interesting to watch as it will show how a truly motivated Terence Jones plays.  Trey Thompkins basically had his way with Jones for most of the first matchup.  Even though the stat line was a draw, the advantage Thompkins had over Jones the first 30 minutes was one of the key story lines.  This is a game where Kentucky’s frontcourt plays well, and I look for a different performance in Rupp.  Kentucky also had one of their worst shooting nights in the first matchup and since the scoring has been down the last couple of games, Kentucky is due to break out of that funk.

Kentucky’s backcourt has a big size advantage in this game and they need to use that to their advantage.   Liggins and Miller can be merciless defenders and in this game they can make a big difference.  Kentucky also has a chance to bury the Bulldogs in the SEC race by handing their fourth loss of the season.  One thing this Kentucky team has been good at is keeping a team down once they get them down.  This should be a good example of this because while Georgia is talented, this is a home game that Kentucky has to win if they are going to compete in the East.  Kentucky 81  Georgia 69.  

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