Briscoe Stars in Kentucky’s Win over Georgia

NASHVILLE, Tenn. – The postseason is a different animal than the regular season.

The games are tighter, the stakes are higher and experience in those situations can be pivotal. So in Kentucky’s first game of the Southeastern Conference Tournament on Friday it turned to its leader, Isaiah Briscoe.

“Offensively, he gets people shots,” Dominique Hawkins said of Briscoe. “He drives to the lane and gets a layup, or he drives to the lane and makes a pass for somebody. Defensively, he’s one of our best defensive players on the court. He’s able to stop the best player if we need him to guard him.”

Briscoe, Kentucky’s second leading rebounder despite being just 6-foot-3, has never been afraid of contact and has always been one to fill out a stat line despite never really caring about the stats he puts up.

On Friday, against a Georgia team fighting for a spot in the NCAA Tournament, Briscoe did everything head coach John Calipari asked of him and led UK to a 71-60 win and a spot in the SEC Tournament semifinals where it will face either South Carolina or Arkansas.

“Before every game KP (Kenny Payne) tells me, you know, just make the game easy for others, and I go out and try to do just that,” Briscoe said. “And my role on the team, I just want to be consistent. I’m not into the stats or anything like that. If I need to go rebound, I do whatever it takes for my team to win. I just try to go out there and make the game easier for my teammates.”

The “bulldog” of a guard, as Calipari likes to call him, was a handful all afternoon for the Georgia Bulldogs (19-14), scoring a team-high tying 20 points to go with six rebounds, two assists and two steals. Briscoe’s 20 points marked his highest scoring game since netting 23 against Georgia on Jan. 31.

“He was great today,” Hawkins said of Briscoe. “I know we were dying at one point in time with scoring, and he was just getting to the lane, getting layups and getting jumpers, but he played tremendous offensively and defensively for us today.”

The key for Briscoe offensively was not decelerating when he drove to the basket. Instead, the Newark, New Jersey, native kept the pedal to the medal and finished strong around the rim to give the Wildcats’ a consistent scoring presence.

And when Kentucky needed a bucket, it went to Briscoe. After UK led by 13 points in the first half, Georgia cut its deficit to just six points before Briscoe hit a tough layup. UGA then cut the UK lead to five on a 3-pointer from Tyree Crump with 12 seconds left, but Briscoe came right back down to hit a jumper just before the halftime buzzer.

“I’m really pleased with Isaiah Briscoe,” Calipari said. “This – he missed like four layups and just trying to get him to accelerate. When he does, he makes them. When he doesn’t, they get blocked. If you’re wondering why he gets them blocked, when he slows down before he shoots a layup, he gets blocked. When he explodes and accelerates through the layup, (he) makes it. So, he did it today and he was good with the ball. He ran the team.”

In defending J.J. Frazier, Georgia’s All-SEC point guard, Briscoe and a slew of other guards used the swarming and desperate attack that Calipari has been pleading for. In doing so, the Cats forced Frazier into hitting just 4-of-17 shots.

But more than anything Briscoe did Friday was he fought, a quality Calipari asks for (demands) in all of his players. In Briscoe, UK has a player with that fight in spades, a guy who’s never going to back down from another player or moment and isn’t afraid to do what he needs to in order to win and advance.

“He can defend, rebound, he can create shots,” Calipari said. “We all forget he’s only a sophomore, like we act like he’s a senior, like he’s the veteran. Great. He just turned 20. I mean, you know – but he does a good job, and these guys know in the foxhole, dude is coming out fighting, he ain’t running. He’s not running. We’re in this foxhole together. I know one guy is fighting, and it’s him.”