Jacob Toppin says Kentucky has seen about anything a team can try already this season. (Vicky Graff Photo)
He knew Kentucky was in the tournament but junior forward Jacob Toppin said his “heart was racing” Sunday night just waiting to see who and where Kentucky would be playing.
“The suspense was killing all of us. We just wanted to know who you’re going to play, but I’m excited,” Toppin said Sunday night. “This is the first tournament game for most of us, and I think we’re all excited. We’re focused on our first game, and we’ll worry about the rest when it comes.”
Kentucky opens tourney play Thursday night in Indianapolis at 7:10 p.m. on CBS-TV against 15-seed Saint Peter’s. If the Cats win, they would play the Murray State-San Francisco winner on Saturday.
Despite the SEC Tournament semifinal loss to Tennessee, Toppin feels good about UK’s position.
“We have a very experienced team that played in a lot of college games but at the end of day this is March Madness,” Toppins said. “We are going to stay poised. This whole year we have played in games like we are going to play in (during the tournament). We just have to fight and limit mistakes.”
Toppin said the team hopefully learned some valuable lessons in Tampa when it lost to Tennessee.
“We understand that adversity is going to hit. We need to respond in a positive way,” Toppin said. “Stay together, stay mellow, stay connected and be ready for the moment. When adversity hit we were not playing for each other.”
How were they not playing together? That’s what I asked Toppin.
“We were not as connected as we were in the past,” Toppins said. “We have played a lot of games where we were connected. On the defensive end some people, including me, were out of rotations and not connected fully. That was the main reason we didn’t win the game. The connectivity of the team has to be the key to us winning games.”
Toppin knows UK didn’t make shots against Tennessee, something that can get any team beat.
“But we are prepared. We have played against everything,” Toppin said. “Every team has thrown everything against us trying to beat us. We have seen every scenario. As a team, we have to lock in on things we need to fix. It’s not going to be easy but we got it.”
