Five things you need to know from Kentucky’s 70-55 win over No. 19 Tennessee
Five things you need to know from the Kentucky Wildcats’ 70-55 win over the No. 19 Tennessee Volunteers in an SEC college basketball game at Thompson-Boling Arena in Knoxville:
1. For one half, Davion Mintz did a pretty nice “Jodie Meeks in Knoxville” impersonation. The graduate transfer from Creighton was scalding hot in half one. Mintz attempted five three-point shots before halftime — and drilled each one of them.
A Mintz trey in transition at 16:09 put the Cats ahead for the first time, 8-7. Another three-pointer off a push by Mintz gave Kentucky the lead for good, 11-10, at 14:22. The third Mintz three at 10:14 put UK up 23-10.
Devin Askew set up the fourth Mintz trey, at 8:24, with a nifty pass that put Kentucky up 26-14.
Mintz’s final three-pointer, with 47 seconds left from the left wing, pushed the UK advantage to 43-26.
The red-hot shooting half from Mintz harkened back to Meeks’ school-record, 54-point explosion in Thompson-Boling Arena in 2008-09.
The accuracy from Mintz ignited the best half of basketball Kentucky has played in 2020-21. The Cats made 17 of 28 shots, six of nine treys, while opening a 15-point halftime lead on the No. 19 team in the country.
Alas, reality set back in after halftime, as Mintz missed all five of his field-goal attempts, two of them three-point tries, and the UK team shot only 6-of-29.
2. Accurate foul shooting — really — is carrying the Cats. UK was able to survive its chilly second-half shooting for two reasons.
Tennessee, 7-of-26 after halftime, could not make any shots, either.
And UK was deadly from the foul line.
Kentucky hit 12 of 15 foul shots in the second half, 17 of 20 for the game.
It was the second straight game in which foul shooting saved the Cats. In Wednesday night’s 82-78 win at Vanderbilt, Kentucky hit 24 of 25 free throws.
For a UK program that has so often been haunted during March Madness in recent years by errant foul shooting, this past week was a nice change of pace.
3. Isaiah Jackson is now Kentucky’s best player. The 6-foot-10, 206-pound freshman from Pontiac, Mich., finished with 16 points, seven rebounds and two blocks. His bouncy presence near the rim repeatedly seemed to impact Tennessee shooters.
As UK (8-13, 7-7 SEC) has gone 3-1 in its past four games, Jackson has averaged 14.5 points, 7.5 rebounds and two blocked shots a game while making 17 of 30 field goals and 24 of 32 free throws.
In the first half, Jackson had a highlight-reel dunk when he drove the baseline, went under the goal, and slammed a reverse dunk into the face of Tennessee’s John Fulkerson.
“I just saw it. That looked pretty crazy on TV,” Jackson told the UK Sports Network’s Mike Pratt after the game.
It did.
4. UK turns the table on Tennessee’s freshmen. In UT’s 82-71 win over UK in Rupp Arena on Feb. 6, Volunteers’ frosh Keon Johnson and Jaden Springer dropped a combined 50 points on the Cats.
Johnson, a 6-5, 186-pound product of Shelbyville, Tenn., had 27 points in Lexington on 9-of-16 shooting. Springer, a 6-4, 206-pound Charlotte, N.C., product, went for 23 points on 9-of-17 field-goal tries.
It was a very different story Saturday in Knoxville, as Kentucky held the dynamic duo to a combined 19 points.
With UK doing a far better job denying the Tennessee freshmen the opportunity to make straight-line drives to the basket, the Wildcats held Johnson to 4-of-14 shooting and 15 points with three turnovers.
Springer had it even worse, scoring only four points on 2-of-11 shooting and also with three turnovers.
5. Shaking loose from the hold of Rick Barnes. Kentucky beat Tennessee for only the second time in the past six meetings.
Rick Barnes’ stretch of four victories over UK in a five-game stretch had been the best run for a UT head man against the Wildcats since Don DeVoe led the Volunteers to victories over UK in the first four games he coached against the Wildcats in 1979 and ‘80.
This is the second straight season in which Kentucky and Tennessee exchanged victories on each other’s home court.
This story was originally published February 20, 2021 at 3:17 PM.
