Aaron Harrison scored all 14 of his points in the second half of UK’s win over Vanderbilt on Tuesday night. (Barry Westerman, UK Athletics)
John Calipari was talking about just one game, but he summed up Aaron Harrison’s two seasons at Kentucky along the way.”Aaron basically threw dagger after dagger,” Coach Cal said.Marcus Lee, speaking after Harrison’s latest clutch display, did the same.”If he’s throwing it up, I’m gonna go shake hands with everybody else,” Lee said.Yet again, it was the sophomore shooting guard who sent UK (18-0, 5-0 Southeastern Conference) to the postgame handshake line victorious. He scored seven of the Wildcats’ final nine points to seal a 65-57 win over Vanderbilt (11-7, 1-4 SEC). “I think it’s fun to be in that situation and it’s fun to be the guy that people look to to take the big shot and make the big shot,” Harrison said.The big shot, on this Tuesday night, was a 3-pointer with 2:09 remaining.The Commodores, who never wilted before a top-ranked UK team and a Rupp Arena crowd of 24,249, had just cut Kentucky’s lead to four on a 3 by Matthew Fisher-Davis. On the crucial possession, Devin Booker tried his hand at the big shot and missed from outside for just the ninth time in his last 29 tries. Harrison, however, kept the play alive with an offensive rebound, passed and drifted to the left corner, just a few feet from the wing where so many of his memorable makes have come from. The ball came to Booker, who with a small opening at another try from deep elected instead to pass on to Harrison.Good choice.”Devin made a great extra pass and I knew I had to make the shot and (be) ready and focused for it and knocked it down,” Harrison said.Harrison would hit two free throws in the final minute to bring his team-high scoring total to 14, a number he seemed unlikely to hit when he left the floor at halftime. At that point, he was scoreless, having taken just one shot in seven minutes as UK led 33-26.The performance surely drew the kind of paint-peeling message you’d expect, but Coach Cal merely smiled and said he told Harrison he loved him. Harrison knew that was the sentiment behind what he heard from his coach, though those might not have been Calipari’s exact words.”I guess it’s really, really, really tough love,” Harrison said, drawing hearty laughs from the horde of reporters gathered around.Whatever Calipari said, it worked. The Aaron Harrison who played the second half hardly resembled the one who was on the floor for the first 20 minutes.”I think he played so well in the second half,” Calipari said. “That’s who he is.”For some, a first half like that makes a similarly poor second half a given, but not Harrison.”I think it’s just his confidence knowing that no matter what happens in the first half, the second half, he can come back and do what he needs to do,” said Marcus Lee, who had six of his seven points in a flurry that sparked UK after a sluggish second-half start. “There are some players who when a couple bad things happen they just go in a hole. He knows he’s good enough where he can just keep going.”Harrison kept going and carried UK down the stretch, but he was hardly alone.His twin brother, Andrew, and Willie Cauley-Stein combined with him to score UK’s final 15 points and it was the 7-footer who delivered when Vandy cut the lead to three with 5:06 left. First, Cauley-Stein snagged one of his three steals, a familiar sight for arguably the nation’s top defender. But on the other end of the floor, he showed something new. Receiving a pass a few feet inside the 3-point arc on the left wing, Cauley-Stein didn’t hesitate in taking and making a jumper that prompted a double-take from even his coach.”Willie did what Willie does,” Calipari said. “Then he took that jumper and I know we all looked at each other like what in the world. But he’s been practicing that. That’s something that he’s been working on.”Aaron Harrison, meanwhile, was happy to share the big-shot spotlight.”I was really proud of Willie for even taking that shot because I know last year he wouldn’t have even taken than shot,” Aaron Harrison said. “So just to see him have the confidence to take that shot and make that shot, I’m excited for him and happy for him.”Cauley-Stein might not have been the likeliest suspect to make a clutch jumper, but you can now add him to the list of players capable of delivering a basket when it matters most.That list, it’s a long one.”I don’t think we have just one guy for that,” Lee said. “I think we have a whole team that can do that. They’re all complete finishers and have done that their whole lives. It just comes out natural.”