UK Athletics Photo
Arkansas coach Eric Musselman didn’t want to talk about the officiating or the play that led to his defensive stopper, Devo Davis, being ejected in the second half of Kentucky’s 88-79 win at Arkansas Saturday.
“I am not going to talk about the officials,” Musselman said.
He did talk about UK senior Antonio Reeves’ 37-point game and talked about it a lot.
“That’s the single best performance I’ve seen a player have against a team I’ve coached outside of the NBA. He was phenomenal. I thought he was fantastic,” the Arkansas coach said. Nothing surprised us. We knew when (Cason) Wallace wasn’t going to play, he (Reeves) was going to be the guy.
“I thought they did a really good job of setting screens for him. Their dribble hand-off game really bothered us in the first half. The D-H-O (dribble-handoff) game hurt us. I thought he came off with great speed off the dribble hand-offs.”
He did that and just about everything else really, really well.
“Both those other guys (Wallace and Sahvir Wheeler) play, combined they can’t do what Reeves did. They put the ball in his hands and he made great decisions, missed five shots. He scored 37 points on 17 shots. The productivity for Reeves was, how many guys score 37 points on 17 shots. It doesn’t happen,” Musselman said.
It helped that Reeves got to the foul line 11 times, including four after Davis got two technical fouls, and made all 11.
And for a change, an opposing coach talked about Kentucky’s physicality bothering his team.
“It’s up to our team to play as hard as you possibly can play. It’s up to our team to share the ball. We did share the ball tonight. Uncharacteristic defense of late. We haven’t played very good basketball the last three games. We’ve got to get better. We did a great job in our non-conference play. We’re still a team that if we play better basketball, which I think we can, but we have to start doing it,” Musselman said.
“I thought we played well at Alabama. Did not think we played well at Tennessee and did not think we played well again tonight. We’ve got to improve, for sure. Right now physical teams are bothering us. Physicality at the rim is bothering us. Tennessee is as physical as you’re going to play against.
“Kentucky’s played really good basketball other than the tight loss to Vandy. They got a lot of veterans. Maybe experience is bothering us a little bit as well. But (Oscar) Tshiebwe is as physical as anyone in the league. We tried to be a little more physical (in the second half) but I thought he really impacted the game and they have good length that bothered us.”
