Kentucky once again finds itself relying heavily on freshmen, and when it comes to the Louisville game, Rex Chapman is the gold standard for a rookie performance.
His 26 points in a 34-point UK win at Freedom Hall in 1986 represents the most points scored by a freshman against the Cardinals. Next is Rajon Rondo’s 25 in 2005.
The most points scored by a Cat of any year against the Cards is 34 by Derrick Miller in a 1989 loss.
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Remember Vinnie “The Microwave” Johnson?
I do. He was the super sub for those great Detroit Pistons’ teams of the late 1980s, providing instant offense off the bench.
Someone asked Doron Lamb at a recent media session if he knew who Johnson was but Lamb had no idea. Like head coach John Calipari often says, for young people, “history” is two or three years at the most.
But Lamb is certainly filling that role for Kentucky and he’s on pace to shatter the school record for 3-point percentage by a freshman.
Myron Anthony holds the mark at 46.2 percent in the 1998 season but that was in a very limited role. For players that got significant minutes, the best mark belongs to Derrick Miller (43.2 in 1986-87).
Miller and Gerald Fitch are the only players who played significant minutes as freshmen to shoot better than 40 percent from the 3-point line.
Lamb is currently hitting 54.0 percent of his 3s.
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“We just hope he gets an A in Alegra II. We’ll worry about Trig next spring.”
That was the response from UK offensive coordinator Randy Sanders to a question about Morgan Newton’s command of the offense for the BBVA Compass Bowl compared to last season and whether it was similar from moving from one level of math to a higher one. Sanders said Newton is clearly much more advanced than where he ended last season as the emergency sub when Mike Hartline went down with a midseason injury.
“He’s a million miles from where he was last year at this time,” Sanders said. “He’s still got work to do, but last year we had maybe 10 pass plays where he had reads and progressions, whereas now we’ll carry a pretty good volume of plays.”
Sanders noted that the big difference in the QB change is that a fifth-year senior has the experience to get the team out of bad plays more easily than a second-year signal caller.
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During the practices leading up to the 2006 Music City Bowl, wide out Steve Johnson blossomed and foreshadowed the big year that was coming in 2007.
On his pre-bowl call-in show on the Big Blue Sports Network, UK coach Joker Phillips pointed to linebacker Ridge Wilson as a player who is making a similar transformation in the practices since the end of the regular season.
That’s one of the main positives of going to bowl games regularly.
