Mintz describes UK crowd’s excitement as ‘like a vibration around me’
Davion Mintz’s shooting to start the second half Saturday took Kentucky Coach John Calipari back more than a quarter century.
To put in five three-pointers in barely more than five minutes of play made Calipari think of 1995 and a guard on his UMass team, Edgar Padilla.
Padilla was so hot in a game at Xavier that Calipari could sense a heat check coming from in front of the UMass bench.
“Don’t you shoot it! Don’t! Don’t!” Calipari remembered saying to Padilla. “He shot it, and he made it, and we won the game.”
With Mintz, Calipari was not the autocratic coach. He tried sensibility
“I said, easy now,” the UK coach said. “Easy. Easy.”
But there was no stopping Mintz, whose shooting propelled Kentucky to something maybe more rare than five three-pointers in rapid-fire fashion: a blowout victory. UK smashed hapless South Carolina 92-64.
“As soon as you saw me smacking my hands so hard for the ball, I knew,” Mintz said of the impulse to shoot. “I heard Cal say, easy.
“No, I’ve got to take this one.”
His first three-pointer of the second half came with 18:15 left. Barely three minutes later, Mintz had made four more. The final one in the one-man blitz — with the anticipation of the crowd as easy to hear as Calipari’s note of caution — put Kentucky ahead 55-36 with 14:52 left.
“The energy, everything I felt in the arena was like a vibration around me,” Mintz said of the crowd’s audible anticipation of another swish. “I knew it was up as soon as I was clapping for it.”
UK came into the game averaging 5.9 three-point baskets, which ranked 293rd in Division I.
While nearly matching that in less than six minutes, Mintz’s flurry also equaled as many threes as Kentucky had made in 12 previous games (and surpassed the total in seven earlier games) this season.
Mintz finished with a six threes, one short of a season high for a UK player (Dontaie Allen’s seven at Mississippi State).
But this UK victory was not a solo act. Brandon Boston made a career-high six three-point baskets and scored a career-high 21 points.
Cam’Ron Fletcher came into the game late in the second half. It was his second appearance in the last 18 games. He scored on a dunk (his first points since scoring four against Richmond in the second game of the season).
Lance Ware scored his first points since the Feb. 2 game at Missouri.
Isaiah Jackson, who posted a double-double (13 points and 10 rebounds), welcomed the fun that came with a departure from the grinding norm of this Kentucky team. Of UK’s earlier 23 games, 13 were decided by a single-digit margin.
“We finally got to take a break the last three minutes …,” Jackson said. “It felt really good to actually sit back and enjoy the game.”
Overall, Kentucky made 13 of 27 shots from beyond the arc in improving its record to 9-15 (8-9 in the Southeastern Conference.
South Carolina, which came into the game ranked among the bottom four teams in 11 of the 21 statistical categories compiled by the SEC, lived down to those numbers. The Gamecocks, who have been hit hard by the coronavirus, fell to 6-14 overall and 4-12 in the SEC.
Calipari had billed the game as a chance to set his team on a path going into the postseason. Though that path has the appearance of a shooting gallery, defense carried Kentucky to a 36-28 halftime lead. South Carolina scored only three field goals in the final 9:50 of the first half, and only two in the final 8:03.
A 36-28 halftime deficit might have looked insurmountable to South Carolina. The Gamecocks had won only one of 12 previous games this season in which they trailed at halftime.
Mintz saw to it that it would be one victory in 13 such games.
“That was crazy,” Jackson said of Mintz’s shooting. “He was the one that really stretched the game out for us.”
Mintz has made clutch shots in earlier games. He’s been especially hot lately. In the last five games, he has made 27 of 60 shots, 20 of 44 from three-point range.
Calipari stopped short of saying Mintz will be the go-to guy Kentucky has sought in this season’s many possession-by-possession situations.
The decision on that player will be made “game to game,” Calipari said.
Up next
SEC Tournament
Matchup: No. 8 seed Kentucky vs. No. 9 seed Mississippi State
When: Noon Thursday
Where: Bridgestone Arena in Nashville
TV: SEC Network
This story was originally published March 6, 2021 at 3:59 PM.
