DeAndre Liggins wears Kentucky blue, but he’ll have his Ole Miss red-and-blue blinders on Thursday when the Rebels take on South Carolina in the first round of the Southeastern Conference Tournament.The winner of the game will face UK in the quarterfinals of the SEC Tournament on Friday in Atlanta. Liggins welcomes another shot at Ole Miss guard Chris Warren. See, Liggins relishes the chance of guarding the opposition’s best players. He loves a challenge and lives for the opportunity to watch a prolific scorer struggle to put the ball in the basket over his gangly 6-foot-6 frame. But Warren was one of the few players this year that won a one-on-one battle with Liggins.Warren scored 22 points in the Rebels’ upset of Kentucky a month ago, including the game-winning shot, and now Liggins wants his chance at redemption.”I think Chris Warren got the best of me,” Liggins said. “I’m prepared. If I had the chance to play (Connecticut’s) Kemba Walker and the guys that beat us (again), it would be different.”Liggins has played with a pit bull’s mentality of late. Not that he was resting on his laurels or reputation as one of the best defensive players in the country earlier this season, but Liggins seems to have returned to his energetic ways of a season ago since Calipari’s decision to bring him off the bench.The move, which began with the South Carolina game in Lexington, has affected Liggins’ offensive numbers just a bit, but he’s once again excelling at doing all the little things, focusing on the areas that got him out of Calipari’s doghouse at the beginning of last year and made him such a vital player.He’s nasty defensively and more vocal on the court than he has ever been in his career.His energy, though, has sometimes toed the line between just right and too much. Liggins received two technicals in a recent four-game stretch, both of which turned out to be important plays in Kentucky road losses. Quiet off the court, Liggins appeared to receive a warning in the first half of the Tennessee game for jawing too much with Tennessee star player Scotty Hopson. Liggins’ teammates had to cool him down at the foul line.”I loved his play, I loved his energy, I loved his defense, (but) I didn’t like the trash talking,” Tennessee coach Bruce Pearl said.Liggins said Hopson was a great player, adding that he looked up to Hopson, but Liggins, a junior guard, offered no apologies Tuesday for his actions on the court.”It’s personal,” Liggins said. “I don’t have any friends on the court. After the game I’m going to shake your hand and tell you you’re a great player.”Liggins declined to tell reporters what he says to opposing players when he’s guarding them, but he draws the line in the sand at certain points. When asked if he would say anything about a player’s mother, Liggins laughed, smiled and said there’s no hate in his defensive and mental approach. Even so, Liggins said when he gets in the mood and competitive spirit, “he’ll do whatever it takes to win.””It’s a part of my game,” Liggins said of trash talking. “I just tried to get in (Hopson’s) head a little bit and make him do some things he didn’t want to do. I think I did that for the most part.”Hopson finished the game with 13 points but it came on 2-of-10 shooting. Hopson, who didn’t offer a lot of recognition for Liggins’ defense after the game, eventually fouled out Liggins.Even if Hopson didn’t want to give Liggins the praise he deserved, the league’s coaches did Monday with the announcement of the annual SEC awards. Liggins was one of five players to make the SEC All-Defensive Team.Liggins said he didn’t expect the honor, not because he’s not doing his job defensively, but because he played with a similar attitude and fire last year and didn’t earn the All-SEC distinction.People, though, are starting to take notice of the difference Liggins makes on the court.Calipari said Liggins was the only player that showed up in the first half against Tennessee (he had six points, five rebounds and an energizing dunk before halftime), and future Hall of Famer and CBS broadcaster Reggie Miller raved about Liggins after the game. “DeAndre Liggins was the difference for your team,” Miller told Calipari. Miller, as the NBA’s second-most prolific 3-point shooter and arguably its greatest trash talker, knows a thing or two about attitude and confidence on the court, and that may have been what struck him the most about Liggins’ game. Where last year Liggins may have deferred to five future NBA first-round draft picks, he’s now taken onus of this UK team as a leader and a centerpiece.”You’ve got to look at that guy and say, ‘I’m doing you,’ and I think that’s what DeAndre does,” Calipari said. “He claps, he gets up on you, he lets you know he’s going to play you. You’ve got to look at it as a personal challenge.”Liggins is taking on all challengers just in time for postseason play.”I’m confident in myself that I can stop the best player,” Liggins said. “I’m not going to stop the best player every night. We’ve got some great players in the country and I’m not going to stop them every game – but I’m going to try my best.”Heads or tails? Kentucky flipped a coin – no, seriously – to determine the fate of its SEC award winners.SEC rules allow for a school to nominate only one player per award. That meant UK couldn’t nominate both Terrence Jones and Brandon Knight for SEC Player of the Year and SEC Freshman of the Year.That put Kentucky in a precarious position. Who’s to determine who the player of the year was and who the freshman of the year was? What’s the difference on a freshman-laden team?The school had such a hard time in determining who to nominate for each award that it left the decision up to Jones and Knight. They were OK flipping a coin to decide.The fate of the coin tabbed Jones to be UK’s SEC Freshman of the Year candidate and Knight to be the SEC Player of the Year nominee. Jones (17.1 points per game, 9.2 points per game) won his award; Knight (17.7 ppg, 4.0 rpg, 4.0 assists per game) did not.Going into the coin flip, Calipari said both players realized that whoever was chosen as the SEC Player of the Year candidate probably wouldn’t win. Both players were OK with that – they really didn’t have a choice – but Calipari said he’ll try to change the current formatting at offseason SEC meetings.”They both need to be nominated,” Calipari said. “Why not let the voters pick who it is, because whoever we nominated was going to get it.”SEC Tournament coverage: Make sure to follow the blog later on in the week for more SEC Tournament coverage. I’ll be flying out with the team Wednesday and will have updates, features, columns, live blog, video and more on the blog throughout the Cats’ run.