Five things you need to know from Kentucky’s 80-55 win over Mount St. Mary’s
Five things you need to know from the Kentucky Wildcats’ 80-55 win over the Mount St. Mary’s Mountaineers at Rupp Arena at Central Bank Center:
1. Oscar Tshiebwe’s amazing start. It’s hard not to wonder if any Kentucky player has ever gotten their Wildcats career off to a better start than the big man who transferred from West Virginia.
After going for 24 points and 16 rebounds vs. Mount St. Mary’s, Tshiebwe is now averaging 18 points and 18.7 rebounds through three games.
The rebounding numbers being compiled by the 6-foot-9, 255-pound product of the Democratic Republic of Congo tease the imagination.
Kentucky’s single-season record for rebounding average was set by Bob Burrow in 1954-55, 17.7 rebounds per game.
UK’s career record for rebounds per game (minimum 60 games played) is held by Cliff Hagan at 13.4.
Tshiebwe’s amassing of immense rebounding numbers has to slow once the competition becomes consistently high.
Doesn’t it?
2. Sahvir Wheeler making a statement. After the transfer point guard from Georgia turned the ball over seven times in UK’s season-opening loss to Duke, some alarm bells went off.
For all his merits while leading the SEC in assists (7.4 a game) with the Bulldogs last season, Wheeler had been a tad turnover-prone, averaging 4.4 miscues a contest.
Well, in Kentucky’s subsequent blowout victories over Robert Morris and Mount St. Mary’s — admittedly a long way, competitively, from Duke — the 5-9, 180-pound Houston product has sent a message to the worriers.
Over those two games, Wheeler’s assists/turnover ratio is a cool 20-to-1.
After having 12 assists and no turnovers in the 100-60 win over Robert Morris, Wheeler had eight assists vs. one turnover against Mount St. Mary’s.
He also chipped in 12 points.
When Kentucky turned a moderately competitive game into a rout with a 13-0 run to start the second half, Wheeler was the primary reason.
He scored six points, all off driving layups, and had an assist in the game’s decisive stretch.
3. Another light crowd in Rupp. Continuing an early-season trend, there were ample empty seats throughout Rupp Arena at tip-off. Though the crowd filled in slightly after the game commenced, it was another relatively smallish gathering to watch Kentucky Wildcats basketball.
The announced attendance was 18,227. That is a “tickets distributed” count.
There were obviously far fewer than that number in the Rupp stands.
4. Crushing “the little guys.” The victory over Mount St. Mary’s makes John Calipari 99-3 as Kentucky head coach against teams from outside the seven most-prominent basketball conferences — the football Power Five plus the Big East and the American Athletic Conference.
Can you recall the three losses?
▪ The first loss from “down the college hoops food chain” came at Robert Morris, 59-57, in the opening round of the 2013 NIT.
▪ In 2019-20, Evansville shocked Kentucky 67-64 in Rupp Arena.
▪ Last season, Richmond whipped the Wildcats 76-64, also in Lexington.
5. Cats gain a game on Kansas. With the victory, Kentucky gained on idle Kansas, at least fleetingly, in the all-time men’s college hoops wins race.
UK now has 2,329 all-time victories as a program, while KU sits at 2,325.
The Jayhawks next play Thursday night at home vs. Stony Brook.
Kentucky’s next game is against Ohio University on Friday night in Rupp Arena.
This story was originally published November 16, 2021 at 9:01 PM.
