Vicky Graff Photo
Kentucky basketball suffered a 99-70 beatdown by Alabama on Friday night in the quarterfinals of the SEC Tournament.
Though the game was rather close for most of the first half, Alabama cut Kentucky off from closing the gap and building any momentum.
In the second half, Alabama’s offensive force was simply too much for the injury-depleted Wildcats to overcome.
The Crimson Tide scored 54 second half points and, by the end of the game, had at least eight players score five or more points with five of those players scoring at least 13 points.
Kentucky, meanwhile, had strong performances from Amari Williams (16 points) and Andrew Carr (18 points) but the remainder of the team combined for just 36 points on an incredibly inefficient 9-38 (23%) shooting from the field, including 4-17 (23%) from three-point range.
The Wildcats were also missing their three best ball handlers in Lamont Butler (shoulder), Jaxson Robinson (wrist) and Kerr Kriisa (foot) due to injury. Not only are they Kentucky’s best distributors of the basketball, but Butler and Robinson are above-average scorers with Butler also recognized as one of the better on-ball defenders in the country.
Each of Butler, Kriisa and Robinson has either battled injuries for the entire season or simply been out for a significant amount of time due their injury.
Though Mark Pope’s team was blown out on Friday night, his freshmen have stepped up in those players’ absence to earn fantastic experience that should escalate their growth as well as their maturity in high-pressure moments.
There seems to be optimism that Butler can make a return for the team’s NCAA Tournament run, but the Wildcats will still need to heavily rely on the likes of Collin Chandler and Travis Perry in their rotation.
Kentucky will now take some time to rest before they learn of their official NCAA Tournament seeding on Selection Sunday.
Kentucky-Alabama MBB
Photos by Vicky Graff
3 Responses
Next year’s team needs to bulk up, plan to go 10 deep using their 5 fouls each as assassin’s daggers, and be in the best shape of their lives where the can go 110% on both ends of the floor while they are on the floor. This is the new era of college basketball.
I agree 100%. I think we were a Richie Saunders away from being great this year. He was a eye lash away from signing at Kentucky. He is absolutely dominating out west. I think being decimated by injuries is what killed us this year. We were playing great then the injuries started piling up. We didn’t feel Kerrs injury until Butler got hurt because he was playing so many minutes. Not having Kerr to lean on which I think he’s a little better than Perry and HR should be he’s 4 years older than Perry but not having Kerr has killed us when Butlers hurt. Perry isn’t ready on defense and his offense is sometimey. Next year the 3 freshman will be much better from getting this extra playing time down the stretch. Next year the 3 freshman will have a year of experience and will be ready to help the team which they just can’t do right now. Perry will be the backup point guard. Chandler will backup the 2 and Noah will backup the 3. They will be in a 10-11 man rotation. I think Pope will have 13 guys on next years team as well. We are one point guard away from being a good team. We have way to many turnovers really stupid turnovers even when its just a bad pass or not holding onto the ball. We can’t win when we have a ton of turnovers.
You could tell Pope looked bewildered much of last night. I hope he does learn this year that you have to be a little tougher with these guys and hit the accountability button harder than he has. The team also has NO " next man up mentality". I still hope Pope is the long term answer for us, but we really haven’t shown much development this year and in-game adjustments weren’t there either. I don’t know why didn’t try to have Williams attack the basket more.