Vicky Graff Photo
After watching Kentucky lose 102-97 to Alabama Saturday, I wasn’t sure whether to give Alabama more credit for playing a terrific game or look for faults in the way UK played that led to its first home loss this season.
That’s why I was curious to hear how UK Radio Network analyst Jack Givens felt about what he saw during his postgame comments.
“We saw two really good basketball teams. You knew coming into this game it was going to be played with both teams pursuing 100 (points),” said Givens. “With these two teams, because of how prolific they are on the offensive end, we knew it would be high scoring.
“I am proud of the way Kentucky played. They matched Alabama physically. It was one of those games somebody had to lose and unfortunately it was Kentucky.”
Givens, a former All-American and third all-time leading scorer with 2,038 points, did regret that with Alabama leading 84-81 that UK could not get loose balls after Alabama misses on two straight possessions.
“Kentucky had a chance for both (balls) but sometimes the ball does not bounce your way,” he said. “I think Mark (Pope) will be happy with the effort but not happy with the way the team executed offensively a few times and a couple of those 50-50 balls they did not come up with.”
Givens did acknowledge other than Otega Oweh and Lamont Butler that UK defenders could not keep Alabama players from driving into the lane.
“That is just man on man defense to not allow your guy to play bully ball against you and get to the paint,” Givens said. “Alabama did that against Kentucky’s bigs. They tried against the guards but Otega and Lamont would not be pushed around by those guys.”
Givens said UK has made adjustments to become more physical than it was in losses to Clemson, Ohio State and Georgia.
“They have made the adjustments but you would expect a veteran team to do that. It was pretty obvious in the second half Alabama was going to bring bully ball but Kentucky responded,” Givens said. “Sometimes it is how the game is called. Alabama from the beginning, especially Grant Nelson, was lowering shoulders and getting to the basket. Later Kentucky started doing that but Alabama kept pushing in the chest and using the shoulder to clear out and it was too late for the officials to change (how they were calling the game).”
Givens liked that UK scored 97 points, had seven players in double figures and never quit battling.
“Alabama played a great game but I thought Kentucky played very well also. You won’t hear me say it very often but the ball just bounced Alabama’s way down the stretch. It was unfortunate the ball didn’t bounce their way down the stretch but give Alabama credit for making the plays down the stretch.
“I will go to war with our Kentucky team any time you want to have a game because we are a very good team. You have a game and get seven guys in double figures and put 97 points on the board you are going to win that game. Kentucky will have a lot more games like that over the season
“The bigs had to be physical . You know they were going to attack the basket and see if Kentucky could match up and Kentucky proved that they can. Now they have a week to get healthier (before playing at Vanderbilt) and that will help a lot.”
11 Responses
bully ball, aka THUG BALL, is street ball in an enclosed arena with biased refs. When refs are making the decision who is fouling and who is not, the outcome of a close game has been decided before the opening tip.
In close game, just 2 non-calls at one end and a couple of bad calls at the other end makes the difference between winning & losing.
UK has been given the short end as long as I can remember – since the early 60’s – and every decade since – even at home games! Road game & tournament games are even worse. I was in the 4th row when Big Dan Issel was called for a 5th foul in his final game at the Reginal Finals at St Johns Arena (?) in Columbus, Ohio. He was not even close to the Jacksonville player who tripped, but UK got beat after he went to the bench. There are so many more like it. I attended games when UK played at UGA for decades and saw all types of crooked calls.
UK played a heck of a game, and almost overcame disadvantages. However, as long as any player who gets 20 or more minutes goes solo and does not play TEAM 1st ball, then UK is opening the door for a loss. ANY player who plays selfish MUST be benched immediately if UK is going to make the cut to get an SECT bye (only 4 available!) and if UK hopes to get to the S16 and beyond, then those prone to be selfish must NOW choose to give 100% TEAM BALL every minute of every game henceforth. This who play selfish are CHEATING Coach Pope, team mates & the BBN of wins and a shot at the FF & #9.
Quite frankly, I would be happy to see those who don’t plan to say committed to TEAM ball to decide to quit the team. The 3 freshmen will make mistakes but if they are team first players, they will help more than any selfish player.
ESPN’s computer says we will go 6-7 in our last 13 games. Realistically, I see it at 7-6. Now that we know what kind of team we have, if Pope goes 8-5 or better, he has overachieved with this team.
Interesting projections. Yesterday I told a good flfriend UK has 3 losses lined up (AUB & 2 x TN) and will lose another 2 if even just one or two players with 20 minutes play selfish. To keep the losses to 3 more or fewer, it is essential that the selfish play MUST STOP. Otherwise, 6-7 or 7-6 will just be because of 1 or 2 players.
I don’t see much selfishness? When Robinson is hot or Brea or whomever you feed them. They shoot a lot. Not selfish to do that. If they have open shots, take them. Nothing selfish about it. IF you have a team mate with a BETTER shot and you take a BAD shot, then it is selfish. I don’t see much of that….
The stat sheet tells the story. Shooting a lot when hot is great. Going 0-5 or 1-6 from 3 with no assists or 1 rebound is not team play of there are others whose shots were on target but did it get many because the “0” guy took too many while getting 0 assists. Some folks see it as selfish and others don’t. To each his own. I don’t make it an issue if someone sees it differently. The ultimate W or L is the result we all want,
This is a quote from an SEC head coach to John Goodman about John Calipari:
“There’s just no fear now when I see him on the other sideline,” one SEC head coach told Goodman. “The game has changed and he is becoming archaic.”
He runs no offense
You would think a Hall Of Fame coach would know better than to just have 9 players.
Now he has 1 injured and he’s down to 8.
He has 13 more games in a rough SEC league.
I WILL get past him on February 1st when I can boo him and hopefully beat that a$$
He talked to us like we were a bunch of dogs.
Who did he talk to like a bunch of dogs? Cal is toast….
Us Wildcat fans the past couple of years.
GOD LOVE YA, WILD WEST!!! WE NEED MORE LIKE YOU, BIG BLUE!!! Starting the COVID season of 2020-21, from that point on to the end, I came to see CAL as a total slimeball. Pitino literally flipped the fans off his last time exiting Rupp Arena while he was employed by "THAT OTHER PLACE"–LOL–but everything that CAL did his last 4 yrs, especially the chicken-shit kneeling on the road at FLA, was a bigger middle finger to this fan base than any literal bird Pitino could have flipped us while at LOU. And Pitino made amends with us–something for over 20 yrs I nvr thought would happen. So u can’t ever be sure of anything that IS OR ISNT going to happen–but I’m not so sure about CAL—idk that he will ever end up having a day 10-15 yrs down the road in Rupp like Pitino had. The difference between Pitino and Calipari is simply this: at the time, we took it as Rick F’ing us when he took the job at LOU. But in hindsight, I don’t think he was looking to "stick it" to UK or the fan base when he took that job–part of why he took that job, at the time, he said was because he actually LOVED the state of KY. Now i’ll be the first to tell u the CITY OF LOU is NOT the same as the STATE OF KY—but Rick learned that in time. It took alot of years and he had to go thru a lot of pain and suffering to learn that, but he learned it. Lifelong native and resident of LOU here and die hard BLUEBLOOD KY fan to the day I die–and this city will make the worst out of anybody. Anthony Epps is one of my favorite KY players of all-time. And it’s because I am of similar mentality of him. A KY native who is of bulldog mentality but not that talented or gifted and who dreamed of playing for the blue and white as a kid–except Anthony got to make HIS dream come true!! But back to CAL and RICK—Rick didnt actually F us by taking the LOU job, it was the way he handled the rivalry itself and the way he handled the way the UK fans FELT about him being at LOU in the first place! We felt if anybody should understand how the LOU rivalry makes us feel, it should be Rick! So why would u go there? We just couldn’t see his decision from HIS OWN PERSPECTIVE because we are fans! I didn’t agree with nor did I approve of some of the things Rick did and said about our fans a few times over the years while he was at LOU—but I don’t for one sec believe he took that job to screw us over—why would he feel that way about KY just 4 yrs after leaving? His deal at THAT time was he was desperate to get out of the NBA because that was crashing down on him! And he saw the LOU job as the perfect escape hatch because he knew the state so well. THATS what I think that decision was REALLY about. Any hate Rick had for KY didn’t really start coming out until CAL got here. Rick had all the respect in the world for Tubby. And ol Tubby finished with a winning record against Rick too! But the disdain Rick showed for KY after CAL got here was all about CAL–he didn’t have anything against the KY program. Otherwise he wouldn’t have come back in the fold, and come back in the circle again. Its CAL whom Rick truly hated, and u know, after all these years have gone by, and seeing what has happened with each of those men, its like I GET IT NOW!!!! Because u know what? I hate CAL now just as much as Pitino always has, and have hated him in that way since the COVID season. I was never the same with him after 2015–so u could say it began there, but it sunk down to a new low starting with the COVID season, and then these last 4 yrs. And look, I hated CAL the same way back in the 90s when he was at UMASS–he was my most hated coach in America during our run with Pitino and when he had his best UMASS teams–him and Bobby Knight!!! LOL. I began to soften on him a bit at Memphis and really liked what he built in his years there, and at the time after going thru the Billy Clyde disaster, I felt that CAL was the best choice that UK could make at that time–i looked at that time and the choice for CAL in 2009 alot like feeling like Pitino was the right choice for the hire in 1989. But I always had that nagging feeling in the back of my mind with CAL after he was hired about either NCAA trouble or how many guys would start going to the NBA right away. And that started immediately with his first team with Wall and Cousins and that group. CAL’s first of way too many strikes with the UK fan base was declaring that 2010 NBA draft night as "the greatest night in the history of KY BBALL". But with me, my bigger concern with CAL after he started coaching here, more than how many guys were gonna go to the draft, was how far was he going to be able to take these teams in the tournament? And the first red flag on that came immediately in that first season–the loss to WVA in the Elite 8 shooting something ungodly from 3 like 4/32. Wall, Cousins, Patterson, Bledsoe, Orton, Dodson, Miller, Harrellson, Stevenson, Harris, Hood–only CAL could have F’d up that group! They should have been Final 4 at minimum. That loss was shades of bigger losses to come like Wisconsin in 2015–and u know something? Based on the talent level, u could make the case that the choke job against WVA with the 2010 team was a bigger underachievement than the 2015 team losing to WIS–at least the 2015 loss came in the Final 4, and they had won 38 straight without losing. I know it’s really hard to make Final 4s and win championships, but based on all the talent CAL had at KY, it’s not unreasonable to make the claim that KY should have at least either one more Final 4 or one more championship banner during CAL’s era here. And I’ll leave it at that. Because that’s NOT an unreasonable assertion to make. But it took observing and living thru all of CAL’s first 11 yrs here, then seeing what he changed into and became after COVID, and looking at his last 4 yrs here, and then looking at what Rick has done and how he has changed himself after getting out of "that other place", going back to his roots in the Northeast at Iona and St Johns, and getting his head back together up there, then seeing what his attitude towards KY became once CAL was REMOVED from our picture, and seeing what happened once CAL was replaced by one of Rick’s former championship players, and seeing everything Rick has done for and in regard to KY since Pope took the job—ALL OF THAT made me realize the difference in these two coaches where KY is concerned: Rick never outright did anything to the KY program or its fans other than take the LOU job, but he didn’t do that to SCREW US—unfortunately, that was our cross to bear as fans, LOU is our enemy, and we couldn’t accept that, we took it as he screwed us, but that’s not what that decision was about. Did it absolutely suck big time? OF COURSE!!!!! But we had to find a way to deal with it, and move on, we couldn’t do anything Abt that. That wasn’t really our problem. Our problem ended up being CAL!!!! Pitino never did anything while he was the coach of KY to screw the fans or screw the program over in any way, he always showed love to the program, towards the job itself, and towards the fans. CAL IS THE ONE who screwed over the fans and showed a complete lack of respect to the program and to the state WHILE HE WAS THE COACH HERE. And mainly during the last 5 years. There were some other things in the years prior to that too, some even in the early years, but at least back then there was an honest effort and work ethic on his part to WIN FOR KY. And he had fun with this job his first 5 or 6 years. But he never recovered from the WIS loss, and everything began slowly de-escalating on a downward trend from the 2016 season on……nobody would have believed it at the time, but UK won its final SEC Tournament of the CAL era in 2018. In CAL’s last 6 seasons as coach, UK won a total of 2 SEC Tournament games and 4 NCAA tournament games. And of those 6 total tournament wins, 4 came in the 2019 season–after that, one win apiece in each tournament in the last 4 years. For any other coach IN HISTORY, nobody else would have lived to see another day coaching at KY with a 4-yr run or a 6-yr run like that. CAL in his last 8 seasons made Tubby look more like a Pitino-level type coach, and CAL’s last 4 seasons were at a level worse than Billy Clyde’s–the man he was hired to replace. He should have never been kept around long enough to go thru a streak like that. But oh no–Mr Lifetime Contract–another one of the many fine choices made by Mr Athletic Director–CAL was the KING, and he knew it, and he didn’t have any problem letting people know about it either! For whatever reason, after bball resumed after the COVID pandemic, CAL came back from that layoff a completely different man, and a completely different coach than his first decade at the helm. Basically, his last 4 yrs here, he acted more like and treated the fans more like the way Pitino acted and treated the fans while he was at LOU!!!! The last 4 yrs were basically just one big long middle finger from CAL towards the fan base, so much so that in 2021 I almost burned all of my KY stuff–until I got ahold of myself and realized I cant allow my emotions to guide my thinking–that was the moment I realized that KY is and always will be bigger than any one person, any one coach, any one player, any one administrator, any one employee. KY IS KY–and KY is KING. KING begins with a K, not a C. But I was happy to see Pitino come back and be honored at Midnight Madness and it was a classy gesture by Pope to do that, and u could tell that it genuinely meant a lot to Pitino. And he earned that honoring, he earned it thru alot of hard work, and deserved that. CAL worked hard at KY too–in the beginning. But over the long haul, CAL is not even close to the worker and preparer that Pitino is. They are both great salesman and great recruiters, but Pitino has CAL outclassed on hard work all day long. And actually, Mark Pope is 1000 times the worker CAL is too!!! And that’s part of what has cost CAL more championships at ALL of the programs that he has coached at. And now u see his start in SEC play at a different conference school. Its the same ol CAL, man. He AINT NOLAN RICHARDSON!!! Its still 40 MINUTES OF HELL–except this time in Fayetteville, it’s the HOME TEAM going thru the 40 MINS OF HELL!!!!!!