Three takeaways from shorthanded Kentucky basketball’s big win at Tennessee
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Game day: No. 12 Kentucky 78, No. 8 Tennessee 73
Click below for more of the Herald-Leader and Kentucky.com’s coverage of Tuesday night’s men’s basketball game between Kentucky and Tennessee in Knoxville, Tennessee.
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Three takeaways from Kentucky basketball’s 78-73 win against the Tennessee Volunteers in Knoxville on Tuesday night:
1. This is a resilient Kentucky team
Kentucky was without Lamont Butler, its point guard coach Mark Pope called “the heart and soul of our team.” Kentucky was practically without Andrew Carr, the crafty 6-foot-11 forward with the mature presence, who played all of one minute Tuesday night thanks to his continuing battle with a bad back that kept him out of Saturday’s loss at Vanderbilt.
So no way the 12th-ranked Wildcats, riding a two-game losing skid, was going to knock off the eighth-ranked Tennessee Volunteers, right? That’s the same Tennessee that not long ago was the No. 1 team in the AP Top 25 for five straight weeks and entered Tuesday as the No. 1 defensive team in the entire nation? No way shorthanded Kentucky wins in Thompson Boling Arena, right?
“I know a lot of people expected us to lose,” UK center Amari Williams said.
And a lot of people said you could not bring together a team of total strangers under a new coach in his first year on the job and expect to be successful.
And yet, here we are with UK now 15-4, 4-3 in the SEC and 6-1 against top-15 teams. The Cats rocked Rocky Top. Koby Brea scored 18 points. Williams grabbed 15 rebounds and dished four assists. Jaxson Robinson scored 17 points. Ansley Almonor hit four 3-point shots. The Cats ended up making 12 of their 24 attempts from beyond the arc and shot 50% from the field for the game.
Afterward, Pope said that early on in the process it was evident that this team had resilience. And after a home loss to Alabama and a road loss to Vanderbilt, the Cats showed that resilience in Big Orange Country.
2. Celebrate Kentucky’s birthday boy
Without Butler (shoulder injury), you figured that it would be Robinson that would bring the ball up the court and play the point. Or Travis Perry, the freshman who has filled in for the injured Kerr Kriisa as Butler’s backup. For the most part, however, you would have been wrong.
More often that not, it was Williams, the 7-footer from England, who either brought the ball up to break the Tennessee press, or played point man for the Kentucky offense at the top of the key.
“He can do things that no other center in the country can do,” Pope said afterward.
Williams ended up with 10 points, going 3-for-5 from the floor and 4-for-6 from the foul line. His season-high 15 rebounds were huge, with 13 coming on the defensive end. He turned the ball over just three times to go with his four assists. Moreover, he committed only two fouls.
He did it all on his birthday, too. Pope joked that he decided to wait until after the game to have the team celebrate the occasion and that it would have been “really sad” if Kentucky lost. Kentucky didn’t lose.
Said Williams, “I’ve had a lot of games on my birthday throughout my college career and this was definitely the best one.”
3. Tennessee misses were not all bad luck
Coach Rick Barnes’ team entered the game shooting 34.2% from 3-point range. The Vols were averaging 8.5 makes on 25 attempts from beyond the arc. They exited the game having made 11 of 45 attempts from 3-point land for 24.4%. That’s five more attempted 3s than any team has taken against UK this season, topping the previous high of 40 (12-for-40) by Mississippi State.
The Vols’ Zakai Zeigler was 1-for-11 from beyond the arc to go with his 0-for-5 showing in UT’s 53-51 loss at No. 1 Auburn last Saturday. Chaz Lanier was 3-for-10 from 3. Darlinstone Dubar was 1-for-7. Jordan Gainey was 2-for-8.
You might say that Kentucky was fortunate UT missed plenty of open 3s. On the other hand the Cats are now holding opponents to 28.7% on the 3-ball, as the great Hubie Brown likes to say, for the season. As of this writing, that ranks 13th-best in the nation.
Here’s the other thing: Plenty of those Tennessee 3s came in panic mode as the Vols were trying desperately to catch up. Indeed, the fact that Kentucky led for almost the entire second half, after trailing 33-30 at the break, allowed UK to set the tempo and keep the crowd out of the game. That’s not all luck.
This story was originally published January 28, 2025 at 11:07 PM.
