Gilgeous-Alexander, UK Smiling After 90-61 Win
Kentucky guard Shai Gilgeous-Alexander always has a smile on his face. It’s just that it was a little bit wider Friday afternoon.
Gilgeous-Alexander put together the best performance of his young career Friday in leading the Wildcats to a 90-61 demolition of in-state rival Louisville at Rupp Arena.
“Let me tell you the biggest thing if you were watching … what you see on his face is a smile,” head coach John Calipari said of Gilgeous-Alexander. “That kid smiles, and I asked him after – I don’t know if it’s a Canadian thing. I don’t know what it is. But every Canadian that I’ve coached has fun and smiles and doesn’t feel the weight of the world on them.”
Against the Cardinals, Gilgeous-Alexander couldn’t have felt the weight of much anything. He came off the bench to play 33 minutes, his highest total since the Wildcats’ season opener, scored a career-high 24 points on 9-of-16 shooting, grabbed five rebounds, dished out four assists and had three steals, including back-to-back takeaways in the second half.
Afterward, Gilgeous-Alexander was named the MVP of the game by the Bluegrass Sports Commission and was posing in the UK locker room with a championship wrestling belt.
“I think it’s just a mindset,” Gilgeous-Alexander said of his ability to play without feeling all the pressure that comes with playing at Kentucky. “You just have to know you’re blessed and a lot of kids don’t have the opportunities to do what you can do and be in the situation you’re in. You just gotta think of it that way.”
Gilgeous-Alexander attempted just two 3-pointers in the game because of his ability to get to the basket, seemingly, at will. Whether it was a crossover, euro step, with speed or muscle, Louisville had no answer for Gilgeous-Alexander defensively.
“Oh, he was excellent today,” backcourt mate Quade Green said. “Everything, pick-and-roll, defense, he was excellent today. Hitting right shots for us and big shots for us too. That’s the reason we blew them out.”
The 29-point win over Louisville was the third largest margin of victory in the rivalry’s history, the largest ever in the Calipari era and the biggest since a 30-point win over the Cardinals in December of 1999.
Coming into Friday’s game, one of the biggest matchups, on paper, was how UK’s freshman duo in the backcourt of Gilgeous-Alexander and Green would fair against Louisville senior point guard Quentin Snider, the MVP of last season’s game at the KFC Yum! Center.
Together, the two UK freshman guards put up 37 points and nine assists, and held Snider to just seven points on 3-of-11 shooting and four assists. Furthermore, 6-7 wing Deng Adel, the Cardinals’ leading scorer for the season, made just four of his team-high 12 field-goal attempts and one of his team-high six 3-point attempts.
“We made Snider bounce it a couple times when he had 3s and made that tough,” Calipari said. “We tried to take as much as we could away from Adel, make him bounce it and try to know when he bounces he’s going right. But we were able to go zone and man. … We have some bullets in the gun. We’re not stuck like – at the start of the half they scored three-straight baskets. I said, ‘That’s it, we’re going zone.’ And it looked good.”
With a young team, Calipari often says it’s about winning or learning more than anything else. For Kentucky, Friday afternoon had a bit of both.
The Wildcats showed they clearly learned from their loss the previous Saturday to UCLA in which they gave up 83 points, allowed the Bruins to knock down a dozen 3-pointers and shoot 47.5 percent from the field. It was the fifth time in the last six games a UK opponent hit at least 10 3s.
On Friday, UK held Louisville to 61 points, tying a season low by a Wildcat opponent, and hit just three 3-pointers on a whopping 25 attempts. Louisville’s 34.8-percent shooting marked the second lowest mark by a UK opponent all season.
Conversely, the Cats made 6-of-13 3-point attempts, shot 48.4 percent from the field and 56.7 percent in the second half. Kentucky’s 90 points scored were 11 more than any other team had put up against the Cardinals this season.
“I told them that there was an arrogance when we played UCLA, unearned. Unearned,” Calipari said. “They haven’t done anything yet. We haven’t done anything yet. And the other team was playing us to prove individually I’m better than you, and their team collectively and their coach, we are better than you. We didn’t fight. We just let it happen.
“Well, you can’t – if you want to do this for a living, you’d better fight or someone else is going to fight, and you’re going to be watching TV. You’d better fight for what you want.”
The Wildcats blew the game open after the two teams traded runs to open the game and were knotted at 21 points apiece.
Kentucky closed out the first half on a 20-6 run over the final 6:42 of the half, allowing just one made field goal among the Cardinals’ final 12 attempts. UK had one stretch in the opening half where it held UofL without a made basket for six minutes and 40 seconds, going on a 14-2 run in the process.
Leading by 14 points at halftime, the Wildcats came out of the break and hit 10 of their first 14 shots to take a 31-point lead with 9:18 to play.
“Before the game, Coach said we’re no longer freshmen, we’re 11 games into the season and we have enough experience to realize what’s going on and put our foot on people’s necks,” Gilgeous-Alexander said. “I think we did that today.”
Whether it was the defensive improvements, strong offensive display, ability to put a team away or just its all-around effort, the many signs of improvement from the young Wildcats had Calipari hinting at a few postgame acrobatics.
“I told them after, I said, ‘You should all be like Shai, because you’ve got a coaching staff that has your back personally,’ ” Calipari said. “… For me, I’m telling you, you won’t see me, but I’ll do two backflips when I go through this door and a handstand on the wall over there because this – no, seriously, because this kind of performance from your team when you coach in this environment, in this kind of game, it’s big time.”
