Kentucky expects physical challenge, but is South Carolina prepared to provide one?
Kentucky’s game at South Carolina on Wednesday night will not be for the faint of heart, according to UK associate coach Kenny Payne.
When asked Tuesday about the challenge South Carolina presents, Payne said, “Well, I think the first thing is definitely the culture. Frank Martin is a tough coach, a tough Miami coach. His culture is physicality, toughness, rebounding, fighting, you’re not just going to walk into his arena and play basketball and it’s free flowing.”
However, more than once this season Martin has wished out loud for his players to show more competitive spirit and play a more physical brand of basketball.
Martin opened up a Monday news conference previewing the UK game with sarcasm.
“I’ll be more than happy to speak about my wonderful team,” he said.
South Carolina (8-7) has lost its last three games, a skid started by a home loss to Stetson. Those losses followed a victory at No. 9 Virginia, thus South Carolina can serve as an example in this topsy-turvy college basketball season.
“We can’t be Jekyll and Hyde … ,” Martin said after the loss to Stetson. “Who are we?
“I don’t want to say front-runner, but that’s kind of who we are right now. When things are going our way, we talk. We’re excited. We’re energetic. We’re together. As soon as things get really hard, we get very quiet, passive and individualistic.”
After last weekend’s 56-55 loss at Tennessee, Martin questioned the competitive spirit of guards A.J. Lawson and Jair Bolden.
“I can’t help guys that aren’t playing with fire … ,” he said after the game. “The word ‘casual’ comes to mind a lot when you ask me about those two guys.”
After an 81-68 loss to Florida last week, Martin said, “We got out-toughed.”
It has been said that teams reflect the personality of the coach. To which, Martin told reporters Monday, “You wouldn’t hurt my feelings if you say this team doesn’t have my personality.”
‘Tremendous stress’
Martin cited one player who plays with a competitive spirit. Unfortunately for South Carolina, he plays for UK.
“Ashton (Hagans), he’s wired to compete,” Martin said. “(That’s) one of the reasons I recruited him … because I’m kind of wired to compete, too.” After going against such star point guards as Cassius Winston (Michigan State) and Kira Lewis Jr., (Alabama) this season, Hagans and UK will look to disrupt a South Carolina team that has committed more turnovers (209) than gotten credit for assists (199).
“Point guard play is a major problem for us right now …,” Martin said Monday. “We’ve got no personality at the guard spot.”
Of the challenge presented by Hagans and UK’s other guards, Martin said. “It’s going to put a tremendous stress on something that we’ve been average at, at best.”
More, more, more
Counting all games, Hagans leads SEC players in assists (7.3 per game) and is tied for third in steals (one behind Dru Smith of Missouri and Skylar Mays of LSU).
Hagans ranks eighth nationally in assists and No. 34 in steals.
Not enough, Payne said.
“I think Ashton is another example where everybody is talking about national defensive player of the year,” Payne said. “Well, from our standpoint, from (Calipari’s) standpoint, it’s not close. He’s not as disciplined as he needs to be to be the best defender in the United States in college basketball. He’s not close.”
This echoed Calipari. On the radio show Monday night, he suggested Hagans did not take enough pride in defending.
While saying Hagans’ defense will translate on the NBA level, Calipari said he told UK’s point guard, “That doesn’t make you happy, does it? You should be ecstatic. Your whole mindset should be when these people leave, they’re going to be talking about me defensively.”
Calipari also applied UK’s more-more-more ethos to Nick Richards, whose seven double-doubles this season include three in the last four games.
Richards’ 11 rebounds against Alabama last weekend? Insufficient, Calipari said.
“We watched the tape,” the UK coach said. “He should have had 20 rebounds.”
Record watch
South Carolina ranks 341st in the nation in free-throw shooting. The Gamecocks have made 61.4 percent of their free throws.
The school record for poorest free-throw accuracy is 60.4 percent, which was set in 1994-95.
Etc.
Mike Morgan and Jon Sundvold will call the game for the SEC Network.
