Fitfully, UK’s Growth Continues in Win over Vermont

Kentucky schedules purposefully.
 
With perennially young teams, preparation for March is the priority rather than wins in November.
 
“Look, I say this every year, but even more so with this team–we’re starting all freshmen, we bring in two sophomores who haven’t played that much, with a freshman off the bench,” John Calipari said. “You cannot play Popcorn State and learn anything. You got to play good teams.”
 
Even so, Coach Cal had some moments of doubt evaluating the Wildcats’ opponent on Sunday.
 
“Now, I didn’t realize how good this team was until I watched the tape and then I’m like, who scheduled this to be our second game?” Calipari said. “This is ridiculous.”
 
Eventually, he managed to convince himself facing Vermont would be good for his team.
 
“I told them prior to the game, I’m so excited about this game because we’re going to learn about ourselves,” Calipari said. “And we’re going to learn about individuals, what they’re capable of and maybe what they’re not capable of. And we’re going to learn.”
 
The results were exactly what Coach Cal expected, with a quality, veteran Vermont squad giving the Cats everything they could handle. There were predictably lots of head-scratching moments – the kind that cause Calipari to “punch walls in his office” – but the Cats also made just enough plays to eke out a 73-69 win to move to 2-0.
 
“We knew they were going to fight with us and they’re a team that knows how to win,” said Sacha Killeya-Jones, who played 18 solid minutes Sunday. “They went on a crazy winning streak at the end of last year, so they’re a team that definitely knows how to close out games. We knew that we were going to have a fight on our hands and we did. I think we handled it well.”
 
The Cats handled themselves very well to start, building a lead that grew to 14 points when PJ Washington scored nine seconds into the second half. That’s when Vermont started to chip away, just as Coach Cal knew the Catamounts would. By the 13:55 mark, the lead was single digits. Eight minutes later, Vermont was within five. And in the final seven seconds, the Catamounts had a pair of 3s to tie it. Along the way, there was good and bad from pretty much every player who saw the floor for the Wildcats.
 
UK closed the game missing seven of its final eight shots, but the lone exception was a huge 3-pointer by Kevin Knox, who had 11 points and eight rebounds.
 
“How about Kevin’s 3?” Calipari said. “That was big. I need to know late in the game he can make that shot.”
 
The Cats were also plagued by the results of one-handed rebound attempts down the stretch, which is what allowed Vermont two late shots at the tie. No two players stuck out to Calipari more on that front than Washington and Knox.
 
“But the game winner P.J. grabbed with two hands,” Calipari said. “Maybe two minutes before that Kevin Knox put his head on the rim literally and grabbed the ball with two hands in traffic.
 
Similarly, Quade Green – who admitted he is “pretty slow” on defense right now – had all kinds of trouble staying in front of Trae Bell-Haynes. But the freshman point guard was steady on offense in posting 15 points, four assists and four rebounds, and calmly drilled two free throws with 4:59 left when the Cats were in dire need of points.
 
“How about Quade making free throws?” Calipari said. “Needs to be in the game at the end. Quade played well today.”
 
That’s just going to be the way things are in the early going, with the development of this young team coming in fits and starts. The goal, through all that, has to be to take more steps forward than back. A win over a Vermont team that won 29 games last year in reaching the NCAA Tournament marks success on this day.
 
“It definitely means a lot for our team to have this experience under our belt, have this as a reference point to kind of go back to somewhat, I guess,” Killeya-Jones said. “Just playing in a close game like this, you need that. Especially for young guys that haven’t seen this before. It’s really important and really good that we went through this.”
 
The Cats won’t have to wait long for the next such test. On Monday, they’ll fly to Chicago ahead of a matchup with Bill Self’s No. 4/3 Kansas squad on Tuesday at 9:30 p.m. in the State Farm Champions Classic.
 
“He’s got a really good team,” Calipari said. “And they’re veterans, he’s got veterans on that team that have been there and done that and so it will be a hard game for us to win. But it’s another game, let’s see, neutral floor, top-five team, where are we, they’re top four, three, whatever they are, No. 1 in the country, whatever they are. Where is a freshman team, playing on the road, against a team like that, where are we now?”