Vicky Graff Photo
Kentucky assistant coach Bruiser Flint understands the anxiety that UK fans are feeling after the Cats have dropped three of four games to drop to 17th in this week’s Associated Press poll and into a fifth-place tie in the Southeastern Conference.
However, he said Monday the team is not ready to panic going into tonight’s game at Vanderbilt, which got its first SEC win Saturday over Missouri.
“I think our morale has been good,” Flint said. “I mean we ain’t been losing to no bums.
“This league is really good. We’re gonna have a lot of close games like that. I mean the guys are down we lost two tough games, but their spirits are good.”
Kentucky lost home games to Florida and Tennessee last week to fall to 15-6 overall and 5-4 in SEC play.
Tennessee put up 103 points on UK had had three players combine to go 10-for-19 from 3 — and none of them were SEC leading scorer Dalton Knecht.
“They had some guys who shot the ball like they hadn’t all year,” Flint said. “We need to be more consistent in our details.
“I thought in the game, they beat us to a lot of 50-50 balls. We talked about that. Small things that beat you in a game.”
Vanderbilt (6-15, 1-7 SEC) beat UK in Rupp Arena last season and a week later beat UK in the SEC Tournament.
“We’re gonna get everybody’s best shot,” Flint said. “Last year they beat us off the dribble. Expect them to do that again this year. A lot of the same guys back who gave us problems last year.”
Two of the Vanderbilt guards — Ezra Manjon and Tyrin Lawrence —who gave UK fits last year are back. Manjon leads Vanderbilt in scoring at 14.7 points per game and is a 44 percent shooter from the field and 30 percent from 3. He had 25 points against UK in the SEC tourney win and averaged 11.3 points per game in three outings against Kentucky last season.
Lawrence is averaging 14.2 points, 5.4 rebounds, 1.8 assists and 1.8 steals per game. He had 21 points in the win at Rupp Arena last year and 18 in the SEC tourney win.
6 Responses
Our assistant coaches are terrible. Kenny Payne is supposed to be John Calaparis best assistant coach he had ever had and look what he’s doing to the louisville program. People thought he had a great pedigree because he was "bringing in a ton of players" only problem is really it was the Kentucky name and Calapari. Calapari is one of the worst coaches in college basketball but he is also the best recruiter in college basketball. Do you see that twist. 75% of coaching college is recruiting 25% is running plays and motivating your players. That 25% will cost you alot of close games. It seems like Calapari always has his favorite players and what I mean by that is if we continue to get beat play after play after play why would you not try something else a couple times down the court even I will never understand him. If he was even a decent coach a little above average he would have at least 2 or 3 more championships at Kentucky. If he was a great coach he would have 4 or 5 championships at Kentucky he has only 1. What are they saying 1.3 billion dollars in NBA contracts and only 1 national championship??? That doesn’t even begin to make sense. How many players have went to the NBA from Kentucky since 2009? That’s 15 years ago BTW and he only has 1 championship.?. How can this be I’m gonna estimate that he has had over 35 players drafted in 15 years that’s 2.5 draft picks a year and it might be more than that?? Like I said that’s a estimation. Recruiting is the only thing he is great at and he’s not even great he’s really the best. Duke North Carolina Kansas they will always get great players as well we are blue bloods but…. Ask yourself how much better have Kansas North Carolina and Duke been than Kentucky over the last 5 years and it’s not even close. We have fallen off since 2019 and I think Cals below average coaching is getting worse than it’s ever been. I would love to see Mark Few become Kentuckys coach he is a great recruiter I would say for being at Gonzaga a little school he’s a top 5 recruiter. I would say he’s a Top 8 in coaching Noone in my book scores higher than him to me for the Kentucky job. You can disagree all you want too and that’s fine this is my opinion and Few is the coach I’ve always wanted Kentucky to get. If Few had Kentuckys rosters since 2019 he would have at least 3 or 4 championships.
Yes, we don’t lose to bums because we are the bums this year.
Coaching staff looks a little comatose when camera pans on them a lot. Do they not have the skill level to be teaching any of the BB 101 during the week?
Thanks for further supplying a little more motivation to a team that’s playing in their own quirky gym and whose students only show for us.
They did pretty well last year against last year, eh ???
Hate to be political but it’s much like Uncle Joe saying “ we will attack over a three week period at their strategic locations “ !
Think anyone or anything will be there then ??????????????
Welcome to the wussification of UK basketball…now hearing that Wagner and Mitchell will be out for tonight and possibly saturday also. This will continue to give Califraudi more cover as he can continue to say "what do you expect…we haven’t had full squad all year" These players do not play hard enough to cause all these injuries.
We needed this win in the worst way, even if it was over Vanderbilt. It was a fun game to watch even though the refs served up some Commodore home cooking. I was glad to see Edwards have a good game…finally, but he took advantage of the opportunity. Z had a good game as did Bradshaw. Burks had a career game, Reeves had his typical game and Dilly played well too. Again, this was against Vanderbilt, but it was fun to watch. We get them again, but the other 8 games left won’t be easy. Will Wagner and Mitchell be able to find their groove again without hurting the team? I still see a double digit loss season that will be void of any titles. We’ll lose Reeves and Mitchell to graduation and Dilly will be a lottery pick, but everyone else should come back and get better. If so, next year could be the year for No.9, but this year will be more disappointing than not. Will the fraud show up for his post game show? Absolutely! This is where he will be passing out the Kool-Aid to Calipari lovers, but even the Calipari lovers know this was against Vandy.