Attack Mode: Change in Attitude Yields Road Win for UK
John Calipari wasn’t sure if he had ever seen such a half.
In their Southeastern Conference road debut, the Wildcats committed just two fouls and didn’t shoot a single free throw.
“We got punched in the mouth first in the first half,” Shai Gilgeous-Alexander said. “They were the aggressors and we just let them attack us.”
“They,” in this case, was home-standing LSU. The Tigers used their superior aggressiveness to build a 36-31 lead at halftime. That made crafting a locker-room message fairly straightforward for Coach Cal.
” ‘Guys, they want it more than you want it,’ ” Calipari said. ” ‘What is going on here?’ “
The Wildcats flipped the script on all that in the second half. No. 17/14 Kentucky (12-2, 2-0 SEC) shifted into attack mode and came back to nip LSU in Baton Rouge, Louisiana, 74-71.
“We had to come out in the second half and be the aggressors,” Gilgeous-Alexander said. “I think we did that in the second half and that’s why we won.”
The Cats got to the foul line 13 times in the second half and scored 30 points in the paint, a stark contrast to the 16 they managed before the break. They also had 10 assists in the second half after tallying only three in the first half, most coming on drives to the basket and four coming from Gilgeous-Alexander. Gilgeous-Alexander continued his recent emergence with an 18-point outing.
“I have a lot of confidence in Shai because I know he’s going to do the right thing,” PJ Washington said. “He can get to the rack easy and find others and he can also score. We feel like a lot of point guards in the conference can’t really guard him, so we’re going to keep going to him until somebody stops him.”
Washington was the most frequent beneficiary of that, with three of his baskets coming on passes from Gilgeous-Alexander. Washington had a monster second half in scoring 14 points, twelve coming on layups and dunks and the other two on free throws.
“Second half, our main focus was to bang it inside and try to get easy points,” Washington said. “I felt like we did a great job of that.”
Calipari cited Washington as the one player who wasn’t settling for jumpers in the first half. He opted instead to attack, though it didn’t always work, and told his team to follow suit. That was an encouraging development to Calipari.
“He kept telling guys, ‘Would you quit shooting jumpers? Go at this rim,’ ” Calipari said. “And so in the second half, versus driving, we tried to do it from passing to get it near the basket and, you know, I’m happy for him. Somebody on this team has gotta step up and be able to tell guys more than just me.”
Whether Washington emerges as a consistent leader remains to be seen, but his importance on Wednesday night should not be understated. Sickness is making the rounds through UK’s team, with Hamidou Diallo, Nick Richards and Sacha Killeya-Jones all dealing with the flu. The trio was limited to 13 combined minutes in the second half, leaving Calipari to shuffle the deck once more.
“It’s kind of like the season,” Calipari said. “Everything is kind of an experiment and it seems to be game to game that we try to figure out what’s going to work for us both on offense and defense and then run. The biggest thing is they got fight. It’s hard to fight when you have the flu.”
