UK Dominant in Final Preseason Tune-up
In a week, the games will start to count for Kentucky basketball.
For now, the Wildcats are taking advantage of every chance they can to get better. That’s what they did on Friday night against Centre College, and along the way they registered a third blowout exhibition victory.
“I think tonight’s something that we can learn from,” Sacha Killeya-Jones said. “I think we obviously could do better. There’s a lot more things we need to do, a lot of things we need to learn. We’re not where we need to be yet, but I think you can also see strides from where we’ve come.”
UK shot a blistering 61.8 percent to breeze past its in-state foe and grab a 106-63 win in front of 20,378 fans in Rupp Arena. Wenyen Gabriel led all scorers with 20 points while Quade Green (18), Nick Richards (17), Kevin Knox (15) and PJ Washington (10) rounded out UK’s double-figure scorers.
“I think we’ve been starting to move the ball a little more and just starting to get our chemistry together more,” Gabriel said. “I think that’s the biggest thing that’s starting with right there. Our defense still has a long way to go, but we’ve been improving there as well.”
Green buried a 3-pointer 10 seconds into the game and the rout appeared on, but the visitors gamely chipped into an early 15-point lead for the Cats to make it 28-22. But over the final eight minutes of the first half, UK reeled off a blistering 24-2 run to take firm control.
Kentucky’s edge was most overwhelming on the glass, an area in which the Cats lacked in their last exhibition. After Morehead State outrebounded UK 30-25 last Friday, UK reversed that and then some, taking advantage of its significant size advantage and holding a 52-17 edge on the glass. In fact, Kentucky matched its rebounding total from last week with 1:58 left in the first half.
“It was a big focus,” Richards said. “We put these things on the rims if guys shoot it you’re not going to make it and whoever has the most rebounds out of both teams wins. We did that a lot. You could see the results. Guys are going after rebounds more. You can see it on the stat sheet. We really outrebounded that team by a lot.”
The board work came from all over, with six players wrangling at least four rebounds. Knox, though he got off to a slow offensive start in scoring only two first-half points, led the way with 11 boards – seven coming before the break. He had only eight combined rebounds in UK’s first two exhibitions before registering a double-double against Centre.
“I liked the fact that Kevin had 11 rebounds today and Sacha had nine rebounds today and Wenyen had nine rebounds today,” Calipari said. “But again, I mean we should have out rebounded Centre because we’re just bigger.”
Knox and Washington were the only two Wildcats to start all three exhibitions, an example of Calipari’s preseason experimentation. Another such example on Friday was the zone defense he deployed for a long second-half stretch.
“I think we can definitely build on that,” Gabriel said. “We throw that out there every now and then. I don’t think that’s going to be our main defense ever, but I think it’s something good to have in our arsenal.”
Calipari saw potential in the zone, but also flaws. That was the case more generally as well, with Coach Cal sounding more like a coach whose team had lost by 43 than the reverse.
“We just got a long way to go,” Calipari said. “I’m not in a panic yet. I do have both feet on the panic button, but I’m not crazy yet.”
For Killeya-Jones and Gabriel – rarities in that they’re sophomores on a freshman-laden roster – the tone is familiar. They know the urgency has to be there for Calipari if the Cats are going to be where they want to be come March.
“That’s just how it goes,” Killeya-Jones said. “I think all those guys know that we obviously won by 40 points, but we could have won by 50 or 60. It’s not really a matter of the scoreboard; it’s a matter of looking at the film, breaking down play by play what happened, who missed their assignment or what we need to do better. We all know why there’s issues and what the issues are and we’re going to fix those.”
Come Friday at 7 p.m. when the Wildcats host Utah Valley, it will count if those issues lead to a loss. And with games against a Vermont team that won 29 games and reached the NCAA Tournament last year and Kansas to follow soon after, winning is no guarantee.
“They don’t even understand when we start Friday and it’s for real,” Calipari said, “it’s going to be up another level and the teams we’re starting to play, whether it’s Utah Valley and with a bunch of kids back and Vermont, a top-50, 60, 70 team, whatever they are, with all their guys back and they have had two or three back-to-back great seasons. They’re hard games. Then you got to go play in Chicago, Kansas. I mean, this is—it’s pretty heady stuff to throw at these guys right away.”
The Cats wouldn’t have it any other way.
“Being at Kentucky, you have to learn fast,” Gabriel said. “That’s one of the things that we have to do here. Cal honestly challenges us a lot. We’ve been challenged a lot through the last couple days. We know we have a big practice coming up tomorrow again, so our focus has gotta be there.”
