Photo by Chet White | UK Athletics
Kentucky has unfortunately owned the college athletics headlines for dramatic reasons involving their basketball and football coach over recent days. Now their athletic director, Mitch Barnhart, has made the mistake of blaming the media for the noise his his athletic department is inflicting on itself.
For at least one day, though, Kentucky’s excellence over Carleton University on the basketball court can have it’s turn as the top news story. The Canadian school was considered to be the best of the four teams Kentucky faced during their preseason exhibition tour in the Bahamas. However, that didn’t hold the Wildcats back from steamrolling their competition 118-56 in 40 minutes of action.
New transfer Antonio Reeves and now veteran Jacob Toppin stole the show, each scoring 27 points and making five three pointers. The two Wildcats combined for nearly half of the team’s total points and shot a near-immaculate field goal percentage (73% overall and 71% from downtown).
Both Reeves and Toppin were nothing short of impressive and Sahvir Wheeler wasn’t far behind. The usual starting point guard came off the bench on Saturday and scored 17 points on 7-9 shooting with six assists and only one turnover. Freshman Cason Wallace did receive the start and joined in on the double scoring effort with 15 and added five steals on defense.
I received a text from a friend Saturday evening saying “If only Kentucky had played a competitive team during this trip.”
It’s true Kentucky isn’t playing a team of any caliber close to what they’ll face en route to chasing their third national championship banner. But it’s okay to still be excited about these Wildcats. Preseason exhibition is about building chemistry, both on and off the court. It’s about the team enjoying each other and preparing for the competition they’ll face in the upcoming regular and postseason. It’s about players like Reeves and Toppin building confidence like they did tonight. It’s about experimenting with different lineups to find what works best in certain situations and against different styles of teams.
The Wildcats are doing all of that and showing us they’re one of the deeper, more talented and versatile teams head coach John Calipari has ever had during his time in Lexington.
One Response
I have not seen any team this dominant at UK. Tom Leach said last night that the 1974-75 team is the last UK team to have 3 straight exhibition wins by 50 or more points, and that occurred in the summer of 74 on a trip to Australia. I can’t find records for those games yet. A friend observed last night that this team reminds him of Pitino’s 1995-96 team with its length, athleticism and defensive dominance. I like that comparison a lot.
The problem for me is getting a realistic handle on the strength of these opponents. I can’t say what that is, but Tom Leach observed that Monterey seemed like a very good high school team (size and skill), and that may be a good description. However, the pre-game talk about the Dom. Rep. team described it as good and competitive, and we have all been reading about Carleton’s dominance of Canadian University Basketball. I can only conclude that either Canadian University Basketball is extremely weak, or this UK team is extremely strong. The truth probably lies somewhere in between.
I am looking forward to seeing this team in action this afternoon to look at the 4 games in the aggregate. 4 years ago, a strong UK team won 4 games here by an average of 29 points, and that team should have been a final four team and could have brought home the trophy. Is there any reason that the 4 2018 opponents in the Bahamas were substantially stronger in the aggregate than these 4 opponents?
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