Reid Travis returns to ‘bread and butter’ style in leading UK to victory

You could say veteran leader Reid Travis went old school in Kentucky’s final preseason exhibition game Friday. The graduate transfer came to UK with the idea of adding a perimeter component to his power game.

But Travis, who once described his playing style at Stanford as bully ball, mostly used low-post muscle to lead UK to a 86-64 victory over Indiana-Pennsylvania.

“When you’re in a transition, it’s easy to just stand out there and you want to show everybody all the things you’ve worked on,” Travis said. “I’m stretching my game out. You’re not going to do your bread and butter.”

Travis, who led UK with 22 points and 14 rebounds, saluted the coaches for encouraging him to expand his game while not abandoning a style that made him an All-Pac 12 player.

“That’s a great thing the coaching staff has been on me about (saying) ‘Hey, we’re going to let you do some of these things to expand your game and really make your transition,’” Travis said. “‘But when it comes to winning games, you’re going to do what you need to do and do the things you can be successful at as far as down in the post.’ And I like that. If I can be successful down there, why wouldn’t I go post up and try to get those points?”

Travis, who also had a double-double (12 points, 10 rebounds) in the victory over Transylvania a week earlier, impressed IUP Coach Joe Lombardi.

“I’m just glad at the end of the day nobody got hurt,” Lombardi said.

The IUP coach joked that Travis was capable of taking his return to a previous style a step further and play football for Kentucky in Saturday’s showdown against Georgia. Travis played football before turning his full attention to basketball.

“If Coach (Mark) Stoops was here, he’d probably want to stick him in the middle of the line tomorrow,” Lombardi said. “He could be a run stopper.”

The Cats saw an advantage inside against IUP, a Division II national contender that played Kentucky competitively. IUP’s “unique defense,” which Travis said involved over-playing the post in an attempt to steal feeds from the wing, created scoring chances around the basket if the pass was completed.

“We knew we were going to pound it inside,” Travis said.

Another of UK’s power players, PJ Washington, added 20 points. He and Travis combined to make 15 of 21 shots.

But in the first half against IUP, Kentucky got away from the size advantage that pummeled Transy. The Cats made six of their first nine three-point shots and fired away from beyond the arc.

Lombardi welcomed UK’s long-range shooting.

“I think they shot 22 (three-pointers),” the IUP coach said. “We were hoping they were going to shoot 40 threes.”

The second half saw Kentucky take fewer threes and go inside more. After IUP twice got as close as five points, Kentucky pulled away.

UK Coach John Calipari said that 22 three-point shots might be about right for this team. The 13 against Transy were too few, he said.

“But this may be a post-up team,” Calipari said. “So then we’ll play to our strengths.”

Even though UK made seven of 15 three-point shots in the first half, the Cats only led 43-34 at intermission.

Maybe UK got three-point happy. Nearly half of the Cats’ shots in the first half (15 of 32) came from three-point range.

Turnovers also handicapped Kentucky. UK committed six in the first half. All seemed unforced. When neither of two UK players failed to take charge and catch a pass, John Calipari slapped both palms on the scorer’s table.

A few minutes later, when UK failed to made a post feed, Calipari bent over dramatically.

The first half saw Kentucky face its first deficit of the exhibition season. IUP led 4-3 on a fast-break dunk that signaled that the Crimson Hawks came to compete.

A breakout came with UK leading 16-13. The Cats scored 14 straight points in a run that included three-pointers by Keldon Johnson and Travis. Those shots made UK six of nine from beyond the arc.

IUP, which went scoreless for more than six minutes (and had one basket in an almost nine-minute span) outscored Kentucky 21-13 in the final eight minutes of the half.

When Kentucky failed to put IUP away early in the second half, the crowd got a tad restless. Four turnovers before the first TV timeout helped the Crimson Hawks twice get within five.

UK holstered its three-point guns, taking only two shots from beyond the arc in the first eight-plus minutes.

With a greater focus on going inside, Kentucky got its lead back to double digits. With more than 12 minutes left, Travis had already posted a double-double: 17 points and 10 rebounds.

“That’s definitely something I try to do,” Travis said of the double-doubles. “That just reflects bringing energy, just being active. And those are two things that I’ve really been trying to work on.”

This story was originally published November 2, 2018 at 11:49 PM.