Kentucky Wildcat Basketball: A Fans Perspective of the Blue/White game

I’m not going to sit here and beat a dead horse. You’ve heard the entire Blue/White scrimmage updates last night and today. Everyone is talking about Terrence Jones for player of the year and how much a difference he’s made on the court. We’ve heard all about the freshman and all about how high-scoring it was. I was there, sitting in section 28 and row M to be exact. I wasn’t taking notes, I don’t have point totals but I’m going to give this Blue/White scrimmage from a fan perspective. I wanted to save this for the night-cap tonight, but I’ve wanted to write it for this post. I’ll hop right in.

I’ve been to several blue/white games dating back to Billy G’s first year of coaching and I’ve not been more impressed with the score. 126 to 104 which is right at 230 points. This is impressive. Say what you want about the lack of defense played or anything else. Any average team in America could go out and play a grade school team and not score that many points. I saw a good point on Twitter last night, both of those teams could be a top 25 team, and that’s the truth.

The offense was obviously the focus for the game this year, but it’s okay. If someone is worried about the defense…Don’t be. Look how long and athletic this team is. This team will be a natural defensive team because of how athletic and long they are. Don’t sweat about the defense because it’s going to be there. This team will blow some people out this year; it’s going to be a lot of fun.

I have to say how impressed I was with the freshman because they didn’t look like freshman. I know I’ve been told Kyle Wiltjer was a really good shooter, but if his feet are set? Forget it, its knock-down city every time he gets it. Which brings me to another really good point: Kentucky was working on a pick-and-roll type of deal to get their offense started with the dribble drive and it’s one of the best plays I’ve seen at Kentucky. The pick and roll starts at the top and while it’s developing you have someone like Wiltjer and Davis slipping out to the top or midrange for a jumper. Kentucky will be un-guardable at points during the season.

Speaking of being un-guardable forget about bringing someone off of Anthony Davis to help on defense. I watched several times last night someone leave Davis just to fake to go help the drive and once a Kentucky player—I forgot who it was because I was there as a fan, no notes, threw it up to him. I literally thought he was air-balling a floater until out of nowhere Davis jumped up and slammed it home. This happened more than once last night, no helping off any player on this Kentucky roster.

I’m not sure why but I wasn’t as excited about Michael Kidd-Gilchrist as I should be, as shown last night. He can do it all. Off the ball he and Darius Miller were going at it. It was fun to watch, but not only that. Kidd-Gilchrist can flat out dish the rock too. Several times he streaked down the floor to leave it to someone else for the easy basket. He is better than advertised. He’s an athletic phenom. His shot is…eh…But it’s looking better and better, but he isn’t going to have to shoot the ball well.

Also, Marquis Teague…Wow. He’s fast. I hate to compare the great point guards down the John Calipari line of guards, but Teague is a point of emphasis for me. On one hand he can fly down the lane and if you give him space he’s going to the rack and he’s going to score. Unlike Brandon Knight or John Wall, Teague is fast—really fast but he looks for contact down the lane and loves to finish under contact. That’s huge for a guard that loves to do that, and I never saw that in Wall and Knight as much as I do in Teague.

On the other hand, Teague made some bad decisions a couple of times and got the look from Calipari, the good thing is though, once he found a wide open Wiltjer and dished it off to him for a three. Calipari stopped the game just to come out and tell the point guard he did the right thing, and that’s what he needs to do more often. If Teague can be a solid leader on the floor and dish a lot of assists, it’s just going to open the game up for him and allow him to score easier; I think the light will click early for him.

Alright, I’m going to wrap this up with saying that I really think this is the best team since the ’96 team. I may get killed for saying that, but I feel this team is going to be something special. I think they’ll be better than the Wall and Cousins team, better than my all time favorite ’03 team. This is going to be a special year.

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