Vicky Graff Photo
When John Calipari said his Kentucky team was “built for March” it didn’t carry a lot of weight. Since then the Cats have beaten Auburn and Alabama, two top-15 teams, and looked great in both wins even if there was a loss at LSU between the wins.
The Cats have vaulted back into contention for a double bye in the Southeastern Conference Tournament and climbed to a No. 5 seed in Joe Lunardi’s latest NCAA Tournament bracketology.
“This is not a sleeper. They are improving daily. At tournament time they are going to be awfully tough,” CBS-TV analyst Bill Raftery said after UK’s win over Alabama. “They can be so creative as a team and have real good breakdown players
“Do you want to play Kentucky the first weekend in the tourney the way they are playing and getting better? This was a shocker to me. I thought it would be tooth and nail to the end. This is impressive.”
WLAP Sunday Morning Sports Talk producer Beau Robinson and I speculated before our radio show that the NCAA tourney would have 67 teams Kentucky could beat but also might have 67 that on a given night could beat UK when it was not at its best.
CBS-TV play-by-play announcer Ian Eagle was just as impressed by Raftery by what he saw from UK against Alabama.
“Everybody knew how dangerous Kentucky was. It was just a matter of it would all come together in one game, and it did,” Eagle said. “The Wildcats have looked like a big-time program today.”
Freshman Reed Sheppard said it was no surprise to the players that UK has put together big wins recently.
“We go against each other every day in practice. We see it every day we make shots in practice. Everybody on the team gets in the gym and works out all day and gets up a lot of shots,” Sheppard said.
“And everybody can play. The good thing about this team is everyone, no matter what can play really good basketball. It makes it easy out there playing when you can pass and shoot and just have fun.
“I knew it was coming and it’s something that we’re gonna continue to get better at just playing with each other and sharing the ball.”
7 Responses
Go Cats!! I Believe.
Let Go Kentucky I have 500$ on the game. I have to get some of my money back from all the losses they have had at home. We seem comfortable on the road. We need a big night from reeves Dillingham and Sheppard
We also need a big night from 5 tonight. Apparently the tweak is that Z will not see as much PT because of physical nature of game tonight. I can’t connect with the logic here. They do not exactly play softball with BB in Europe, and one would think that it gets physical in our practices as well.It is on the GOAT and staff to get him toughened up by now. It is hard to be that confident with Ony as he may already have had his OND game. Think he had 1 block and 1 rebound last game.
King Goat is lucky to have the London Legend.
He would lose with his Philadelphia, New Jersey All-Americans
I not sure they have lot of freshman and this is not good in the bigger games
Reed Shepherd and Antonio Reeves were a two man team in the game against Mississippi State so glad Reed pulled it out at the end