Vicky Graff Photo
Jaxson Robinson is the player Kentucky was counting on to be its bell cow in this unique season with an all-new roster and new coach in Mark Pope.
Robinson had played two years at BYU for Pope and is the only player on the team who had played for Pope. While he has been good at times, he has not been the team’s best player.
However, Robinson showed Saturday night in Seattle what he can do by sparking a 90-89 overtime victory over Gonzaga after the Cats were down by 18 points late in the first half.
“That is probably the best Robinson has played in a Kentucky jersey,” ESPN analyst Jimmy Dykes said in the second half after his basket cut Gonzaga’s lead to 78-77 with 1:31 to play.
Let’s eliminate ‘probably’ and note it was his best game. It came against a top-10 team on the road. It came against a team that had won 175 straight games when leading by 10 or more points at halftime. It came with UK starting point guard Lamont Butler unable to play due to an ankle injury and then Kerr Kriisa, who started for Butler, going down in the second half with a leg injury. That forced Robinson to move from shooting guard to point guard.
Robinson responded by going 6-for-7 from the field in the second half after going 1-for-8 in the first half. He finished with 18 points, five assists, three rebounds and one steal. But get this — he did not have a turnover in 36 1/2 minutes.
He had assists on back-to-back plays to start overtime that helped UK take an 86-79 lead and then hold on to win even though Andrew Carr, who had a great game, missed two free throws with 4 seconds remaining.
Robinson finished the game at plus 10, the highest rating for any Kentucky player. He also hit a great runner in the lane off his left foot with 14.5 seconds to play which turned out to be the winning points and gave UK a 90-86 lead.
“Robinson looked very confident and had that killer instinct about him,” Dykes said.
Pope said the BYU transfer was “extraordinary” in the second half when UK needed him most. He had played point guard in a backup role for Pope before but likely never in a game with his kind of notoriety and exposure.
“I thought he was brilliant. The first two plays of overtime he made incredible passes,” Pope said. “He made an incredible runner. His defensive effort was incredible and him running the point was great.”
6 Responses
Robinson had a monster of a game, but let’s not leave Carr out of that conversation. Carr was the difference in the Duke game. Carr and Robinson together were the difference in this game.
If Robinson and Carr can continue to put together two consecutive halves in a game, we should be just fine. What a GREAT Sunday morning wake-up feeling!
I was a fool to doubt the Cats. That was an emotional roller-coaster. It was an unbelievable come back. Go Cats!!!
Jimmy, everyone was doubting them after that first half. They came back in the second half and were a completely different team. If they can channel that second half effort into a complete game, they will be hard to handle.
When Carr missed those 2 free throws up by 1 I started really panicking. If they wouldn’t have lost the ball it could have gotten ugly but the ball bounced our way for once!
This was the biggest win for UK BBALL in 10 years. This, and the DUKE win, were the two biggest wins for UK since the best of Calipari’s era here. But this Gonzaga win was bigger than the DUKE win–for several reasons: breaking Gonzaga’s 175-game winning streak when leading by 10+ pts at half, being down by 16 at half, and 18 in the second, and tying the school record for biggest ever halftime-deficit comeback win, doing that when the game is basically 95% a true road game, and doing so WITHOUT your starting point guard for the whole game, WITHOUT another important backup shooting guard for the second half and OT, and the fact that Robinson took the game over the way he did and survived the last several minutes of regulation and all of the OT with 4 fouls—taking all of those factors into consideration, I believe makes it the biggest win of the year. But for Mark Pope individually as a coach and for UK’s bball program as a whole, getting two tough top-10 wins in the first 10 games of the first season for a brand new coach who is also a former player and is tasked with following a legend who just ended a 15-year career, is just about the best start that anybody could reasonably hope for or expect! It’s a huge start at a little bit of independence for Mark–and his staff too, who, by the way, I think is doing a very good job in supporting him and helping him in his adjustment. It’s only the beginning and it is still very early–and I have had alot of concerns about the team, and still do–they were magnified in the loss to Clemson, and very much represented in that game too–but the concerns started before then, in the couple of games leading up to that one. Western KY and GA ST brought in different styles and methods in an effort to neutralize alot of our strengths and frustrate our game plan, and they worked to some degree. But the Clemson loss was probably a good eye-opener and wake-up call that this team needed, and hopefully they learned a lot from the film session of that game. The lack of physicality with this team still worries me long-term with SEC play and beyond–this conference is going to be murderer’s row this year. But just about the time u begin to start feeling like maybe this team just isn’t that good in the long run, like when 18 down SAT night and getting completely outplayed in every phase, out of nowhere they make a run that makes u say u can’t ever give up on this team, and u can’t ever have the belief that they don’t belong. How many wins that translates into and where they finish this season I have no idea–but this is a team that u definitely cannot count out at any time. Their situation honestly reminds me so much of Tubby Smith’s first team–the 1998 Comeback CATS–and Pope’s first KY team may end up being known as The Comeback Cats Part II!! The similarities are quite numerous in terms of the individual talents and abilities, but the sum of all those being greater when added together, in roster construction, in the amount of experience most all of them have of playing college bball, the style and level of coaching (altho when all is said and done, I think Pope has the potential to end up being a better coach than Tubby), then the leadership qualities and capabilities that exist among the team, and in particular individuals more so—there are alot of similarities i am seeing that almost makes this KY team a pure throwback to the way college bball teams used to look like in terms of age of players and longevity in the game, and even in the way they play the game, and the level of their individual talents. Bottom line, it’s going to make for "never-a-dull-moment-in-watching" type of bball team this year, I feel sure! Next we have to get ready for the game of the year, (at this point), and of Pope’s coaching career, this SAT, that will take on a whole other level of pressure for everyone–fans included!! RUPP fans, we gotta bring it SAT for Pope’s first match against Little Brother, so that coaches, players, and fans alike can all start celebrating a Merry Christmas!! It will be the final order of business for what has been a memorable and very VICTORIOUS 2024, and we gotta make sure we send this year out in perfect order on DEC 14TH!!!