Immanuel Quickley was ‘superhot fire’ in Kentucky’s win at Texas A&M
The question after Kentucky defeated Texas A&M 69-60 on Tuesday night was this: How hot was Immanuel Quickley?
“I was a little hot, I guess,” said Quickley, who seemed reluctant to take bows in the postgame news conference.
Teammate EJ Montgomery felt no such restraint.
“Superhot,” he said. “Superhot fire. If you touch him, you’re going to get burned.”
Quickley’s career-high eight three-pointers en route to a career-high 30 points burned a game Texas A&M team that competed to the finish.
Quickley, arguably the Southeastern Conference’s hottest shooter and its reigning Player of the Week, reached new heights. His eight three-pointers equaled the most by any Kentucky player in John Calipari’s 11 seasons as coach. Malik Monk, Jamal Murray and Eric Bledsoe also made eight.
At some point during his recent scoring spree, Quickley jokingly told teammates that to touch him was to risk injury, Montgomery said.
“That was a while ago,” said Quickley, who seemed eager to change the subject. “That’s in the past. We don’t need to bring that up.”
When asked if he’d ever made eight threes in a game on any level, Quickley said, “Maybe. I can’t remember off the top of my head. I think I have.
“I thought I had, like, four. I really wasn’t counting. I really thought I had four. Then, I looked at it and saw eight. I said, ‘I don’t remember any of those.’”
A look of you’ve got to be kidding accompanied the smile on Montgomery’s face.
Quickley’s 30 points equaled the 12th most by a UK player in John Calipari’s 11 seasons as coach. But his scoring also came in a time of need.
After A&M narrowed UK’s lead to 57-50, Quickley hit a leaner in the lane. On the next possession, he hit a three-pointer.
Earlier in the second half, Texas A&M narrowed a 14-point Kentucky lead to 44-38. Quickley answered with his sixth three-pointer. That surpassed his previous career high of five made against Alabama on Jan. 11. The clock showed 13:55 left.
After an A&M turnover, Quickley hit another three.
Of the timeliness of these scores, Quickley said, “It’s really big, especially when your team needs it. You always kind of want to come up big.”
UK improved to 23-5 and 13-2 in the SEC.
To play off the political theme that inspired UK’s “Pick Quick” campaign for individual honors, Quickley’s first half was like winning a primary election in a landslide.
Quickley scored nearly half the points that built a 36-27 halftime lead. He had 16. He reached double-digits for a 17th straight game on a baseline jumper with 10:07 left in the first half. It is the longest such streak by a UK player since Monk did it for 30 straight games in 2016-17.
The second of his four three-pointers gave Kentucky the lead for good at 10-8 with 18:05 left. That first-half lead reached its zenith at 36-25 when Montgomery dunked a lob from Tyrese Maxey with 1:05 left.
When asked what got him going, Quickley said, “Early in the game, I was left open a little bit. I think I had made, like two or three in a row. I was, like, the basket looks a little big.”
Texas A&M’s recent history of giving up open three-point shots from the corner also helped get Quickley going.
“Right after our last game, that was the first thing we worked on,” Quickley said. “We knew they left corners. We watched a lot of film on it. I put that in my workout as well.”
Texas A&M guard Savion Flagg acknowledged that Quickley got “a couple of comfortable looks we didn’t want him to give him that kept this momentum going.”
Texas A&M matched Kentucky shot for shot inside the opening four minutes. The Aggies made five of their first six shots, including four of four on three-pointers.
Then reality set in. The SEC’s worst-shooting team made four of 19 shots (one of nine from beyond the arc) the rest of the half. A&M came into the game ranked 14th among SEC teams in shooting (39.8 percent) and three-point shooting (27.6 percent).
With Quickley averaging 15.5 points in the second halves of the last six games, which alone would rank the 12th-best by any player in SEC play, a 30-point game seemed likely. A 40-point game — and there has only been one in Calipari’s 11 seasons (Monk’s 47 against North Carolina in Las Vegas on Dec. 17, 2016 — seemed possible.
But Quickley took only eight shots in the second half. From 13:06 to 2:26, he took only one shot.
“It wasn’t like I wasn’t shooting,” he said of his overall performance.
Next game
No. 15 Auburn at No. 8 Kentucky
3:45 p.m. Saturday (CBS-27)
This story was originally published February 25, 2020 at 10:58 PM.
