Defense carries Kentucky to come from behind win over Bellarmine

toppin-11

Jacob Toppin had 12 second-half points in the win over Bellarmine. (Vicky Graff Photo)

One could look at Tuesday night’s 60-41 win by Kentucky over Bellarmine in several different ways.

— The Cats held Bellarmine to just 21 points in the first half and only 20 in the second half. Bellarmine shot just 30.4 percent — 14 of 46 — overall and 28.6 percent — 8 of 28 — from 3-point range.

— Kentucky won the rebounding battle 42-21 over the smaller Knights.

— Kentucky shot 56.5 percent — 13 of 23 — in the second half overall and 5 of 11 from 3-point range.

Those were all reasons to be optimistic about what John Calipari’s team did. However, the first-half offense that produced just 21 Kentucky points was a reason for worry. The Cats missed 21 of 30 shots in the first half and other than a brief 8-0 run were completely outplayed by Bellarmine.

Kentucky’s offense looked sluggish and unsure of what it was trying to accomplish against a team not as big or talented.

“If it’s five one-on-one games, we’re not winning. We have to play incredible team defense. That’s how we teach them,” Bellarmine coach Scott Davenport said about how his team held Kentucky in check in the first half.

What made that first-half Bellarmine defensive performance so surprising was that the Knights had given up 76, 74, 80, and 81 points in their last four games and just flew back across the country from Los Angeles Monday. Bellarmine (2-6) came into the game ranked 306th in defensive efficiency.

However, Kentucky coach John Calipari said he was not surprised by what the Knights — who have also lost at Duke and UCLA this season — did.

“Scotty (Davenport) has done a great job with that program. They’re well-coached, they’re great kids,” Calipari said.

Kentucky broke the game open with an 18-3 run in the second half sparked by the shooting/scoring of Antonio Reeves (14 of his 18 points were in the second half), CJ Fredrick (eight of his 11 points in the second half) ) and Jacob Toppin (all 12 points in the second half).

But Calipari was much more impressed with his team’s defensive intensity considering how Bellarmine’s disciplined offense can break down a foe’s defense.

The 41 points were the fewest points allowed by the Cats since 2014-15 when UK held West Virginia to 39 in the NCAA Tournament regionals in Cleveland.

“Really good. We had about three breakdowns but when you think about it, we were all over and it’s hard,” Calipari said. “You play defense for 30 seconds and we needed to show some discipline. We also needed to grind it out.”

Calipari said his players said Bellarmine’s offense was the “hardest thing to guard” they have faced this season.

“I’m happy with what we got in with my whole team. We got a whole team now,” the UK coach said.

2 Responses

  1. Cal said our offense is like having a root canal. Most honest thing I’ve heard the man say in a long time.
    Problem is that he either doesn’t know how or is too stubborn to fix it.

  2. How does the best player in college basketball play for 32 minutes and only get 9 shots? A good coach would make his trigger happy guards learn how to make post passes. If Oscar didn’t at least get one shot per minute played, the whole team would have to run 4 suicide line drills before the start of the next practice and then run another 4 at the end of the practice. I would add an additional suicide line drill to each player individually for every free throw that they missed in the game. The same goes for every turnover, but an assist would negate a turnover.

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