Everyone wondered how Kentucky would respond to their first number one ranking since the 2009-2010 season when Kentucky went down to South Carolina when they had to defend that ranking. UK struggled on offense early but used a lock down defense that carried Kentucky to a 22 point 81-59 thumping of the Red Storm in front of a solid crowd in Rupp Arena tonight.
Just as John Calipari had expected, St. Johns came out in a zone early in the game and caused Kentucky to get off to a slow and sluggish start, but one man who wasn’t on a sluggish start was Anthony Davis. Davis had a hand on a ball in some way early in the game, and with four minutes into the game he already had four rebounds and four points and a couple of blocks. He continued to pace this throughout the game to help keep the Kentucky train going, he ended up with 15 points, 15 rebounds, two steals and an amazing eight blocks.
Part of those blocks came from an amazing Kentucky defense that in the first half caused FIVE shot clock violations early in the game, five times the shot clock went off from Kentucky swarming the ball and getting after the Johnnies. St. Johns looked to be settling for jumpers and three pointers, but guess what? UK was blocking those as well, for a stretch it may have been the best UK performance all year, no kidding. This performance led Kentucky to break the school record for blocks with 18, the previous being 17.
Kentucky went into the half with a 31-20 lead, partly because of quick 12-0 run started by a huge Terrence Jones three pointer to spark the run and then followed with a Doron Lamb three pointer, Lamb had a quiet 16 points with a few floaters and a couple of three point buckets. The scoring run was finished off by a HUGE Jones put back dunk before the end of the half off of a missed free-throw. UK would go into the locker room with an 11 point lead.
Coming out of the locker room it was more of the same, Michael Kidd-Gilchrist busted a three right out of the gate, and the freshman had a decent game scoring five points and struggled to get to the hole against the St.Johns defense, but Jones was there once more to pace the Wildcats with a dominating 26 point, nine rebound and four steal and block night for Jones.
With Kentucky hitting on all cylinders and the defensive pressure increasing for Kentucky, St.Johns was not able to compete early, but one bright spot for St.Johns was God’sGift Achiuwa who was a former Kentucky recruit. He was solid all night, and despite being blocked and dunked on throughout the game, Achiuwa had a crafty 18 points and ten rebounds to try and pace the Red Storm, but it wasn’t enough for Kentucky who put their foot on the throttle late in the second half.
Marquis Teague finished the game with five points and five assists to round out the starting five in scoring, but only had two turnovers on the night and several times he found Davis on a lob. Also following Teague was the sixth man off of the bench, Darius Miller who is known as a zone buster. Miller was 0-5 from three point range tonight, but had a dunk that I will include at the end of the post that will be on the top ten tonight. I won’t even tell you about it, just watch.
Kentucky would race out to a big league late into the game, and when the subs came it the game got well out of hand was Eloy Vargas got a big dunk and Sam Malone got a sweet assist. Kentucky would end the game 81-59 with a big game looming on Saturday.
Box Scores: http://scores.espn.go.com/ncb/boxscore?gameId=313350096