Kentucky Wildcats can win playing "mush mouth" and "mudslinging" basketball

For those of you who watched Kentucky’s 62-52 win over Old Dominion on Sunday, you saw a style of basketball that plenty of opponents will throw at UK all season.  For the most part, Old Dominion’s physical play and zone defense worked against UK, as UK led by just one point at 50-49 midway through the second half.  In his post game comments. Calipari said that ODU had laid the “blueprint” for playing his team, but in the end  said that his team can still win playing that type of ball:

“I think I’ve got a good enough team with good enough guys.  They’ll figure it out.”

Which is why Sunday was a good learning lesson for this team.  Sunday’s game was very reminiscent of what Kentucky will see in the first and second round of the NCAA Tournament.  All we have to do is look back at the Princeton game to remember that.  The important thing is how this team responded every time their backs were to the wall.  The will to win on this team is very high and we will see that showed more throughout the season.

Eric Crawford also has the video from John Calipari’s post game press conference:

Now that Marquis Teague has four games under his belt, the big trend is to compare him against all the past Calipari point guards.  It’s to be expected, as Teague knew what lineage he was joining when he signed at UK.  It’s interesting to note that all the Calipari point guards have struggled with their assist/turnover ration at this point in their career unless your name is John Wall.  Just don’t get too into it.  Teague is a freshman and he will be more than OK. 

Kentucky wraps up their football season this weekend against the only team to make black uniforms look bad and the team that has beaten them 26 straight times.  Unfortunately for Volunteer fans, they have fallen on tough times lately and their program is a shell of what it used to be.  No video can really describe how far the Volunteers have fallen from their “glory days” than this video of the over the top, out of control Tennessee celebration after beating Vanderbilt this weekend.  Vandy, really?  They even have a little song they sing about it.

As some of you may know, I write in a basketball preview magazine every year that is edited by Glenn Logan from “A Sea of Blue” and it features several of your favorite UK writers.  In the past, it had been available at retail outlets through the Bluegrass, but there was a snafu at the last-minute and that did not happen.  Rather than let the project go down the drain, Glenn Logan did a great job of scrambling and the preview magazine is available on your Kindle for just $6.99.  For those of you without a Kindle, it is available in PDF  for just $6.99 as well which is about half of what you paid in stores last year.  The guide is chock full of articles and interviews and is a must for that Kindle owner.