Three takeaways as Kentucky basketball pulls out win over Ole Miss
Three takeaways from Kentucky basketball’s 67-62 win over the Ole Miss Rebels on Saturday at Rupp Arena:
1. Good teams win when they don’t play well
The Cats tossed up 22 three-point attempts, and they made just two. Immanuel Quickley was one of eight from three. Ashton Hagans and Tyrese Maxey were each zero for five. John Juzang was one of four.
“What about all those people who said the game had passed me by and we shoot more threes,” UK Coach John Calipari said afterward. “Maybe we should have shot 30 and gone 2-for-30.”
We didn’t say you necessarily should shoot more threes. We said you should make more threes. The idea behind shooting more three-pointers is that you might make more three-pointers. As Cal himself often says, “You don’t have to make them all, but you can’t miss them all.”
And overall, the Cats shot 39 percent from the floor, making 23 of 59 shots. Quickley even missed a pair of free throws for the first time in a single game all season. Nick Richards himself said he did not play well in the post. Hagans committed four turnovers. The home team was down seven with under 10 minutes to play.
And it won anyway. Good teams know how to pull games when they are not at their best. Give Ole Miss credit. The Rebels rode a three-game win streak into Rupp. Give the home Rupp crowd credit. Cal gave it so much credit he promised to sign a “100 balls” at his postgame radio show, something he’s not crazy about doing.
“That’s really what the tournament is all about,” Quickley said. “We hear all the stories about a bad shooting night in the tournament and you lose the game. Just knowing we can still win games when we’re not shooting, our defense comes through . . . that’s really what it’s all about.”
2. Kentucky’s defense continues to improve
That leads us to our second takeaway. That five-game streak in which the Cats held the opponents under 40 percent shooting from the floor finally came to an end. But just barely. Kermit Davis’ Rebels made 24 of 60 shots from the floor for an even 40 percent. They shot 43.3 percent the second half after shooting only 36.7 the first 20 minutes.
Still, if you are Kentucky and you go 2-for-22 from three-point land and still win the game, you had to be doing something right on the defensive end. UK held the visitors to 62 points, including only 27 in the first half. (Even if the Cats could only score 25.)
The Cats did an outstanding job on Ole Miss star Breein Tyree, the senior guard who had been red-hot of late, scoring 101 points in his last three games. Tyree scored 40 points last time out when Ole Miss smacked around in-state rival Mississippi State 83-58. He scored 37 in the team’s win over South Carolina.
Saturday afternoon, Tyree scored 19 points. But he was just six of 16 from the floor, including three of six from three-point land. He didn’t play badly, by any means, but he didn’t go off like he had some other teams.
“He’s a guy that go out and get 40,” Quickley said of Tyree.
Tyree also afforded the Cats a pair of breaks. Both came at the foul line. With 57.2 seconds left, with UK up 63-62, the 79-percent free-throw shooter on the year, missed the front end of the one-and-one. Then with three seconds remaining, the visitors down 65-62, Tyree again missed the front end of the bonus.
“Very unusual,” Davis said afterward. “He is a great free-throw shooter, that’s part of who he is, and we have him there every time. Down one there is nobody else we’d put on the line but Breein if we had to pick.”
3. Get ready for a battle in Baton Rouge
Even with LSU’s 88-82 loss Saturday game at Alabama — maybe even more so — Tuesday night’s showdown between the Wildcats and Tigers at the Pete Maravich Assembly Center figures to be one of the better games of the year.
LSU defeated Kentucky 73-71 in a controversial finish at Rupp. (Remember the non-call on the possible offensive goal-tend at game’s end.) This is a different Tigers team after suffering from departures from last season. But Will Wade’s club hasn’t missed too many beats. It entered Saturday’s play locked in a three-way tie with Kentucky and Auburn atop the league standings.
“The rest of the way, whew,” Calipari said.
He’s not kidding. After the Tuesday night trip to Baton Rouge, the Cats return home to face Florida. Then with two weeks to go, Kentucky plays Texas A&M in College Station. The Aggies aren’t great under Buzz Williams — they’ll be better down the road — but it’s a conference road game. After that, UK has Auburn and Tennessee at home before finishing the year at Florida.
The good news is that (a) the Cats have shown time and again they can win close games and (b) Saturday they showed they can win when they don’t play their best game. As Quickley said, “defense travels.”
This story was originally published February 15, 2020 at 6:18 PM.
