Cats Cruise To An Easy Win

by:Will Lentz01/15/11

So you’re saying we don’t trade teams at the half?  Come on!

Not much to complain about today as the Cats took care of business early against a poor LSU team.  Lead by Brandon Knight, a balanced attack and intense defense early took the game out of the hands of the Tigers – and after two back to back threes from Knight to open the game, the Cats never looked back.  Winning 82-44 Kentucky moves to 2-1 in the SEC and give LSU their first loss of the regular season.

Some notes on the blowout:

With five players scoring in double digits, the offense was operating about as good as they will get.  They shot 50% on threes with 20 attempts, 42% on field goal attempts, and looked sharp all night.

-Defensively Kentucky looked pretty good too.  It’s easy to come into a game against a less than great team and not put forth the effort on both sides of the ball, but whatever Cal said to get his team motivated must have worked.  They were using defense to lead to transition points early and often, and held LSU to just 26% on their field goals.

-Aside from the score, the Cats won every statistical category that matters.  They out rebounded 45-38, passed out 13 dimes to LSU’s 8, won the steals battle 10-3 and had one more block than the Tigers total.

-The only two negatives that could be taken from the game involve the bench switching freshmen.  Doron Lamb hasn’t been bad by any means, but he hasn’t been his stellar offensive self lately.  He recorded 10 points, but that’s four shy of his average and that includes him getting the start the past two games.  He also only played 22 minutes, but in a blow out that shouldn’t be too big a reason for concern.

-On the other side Terrence Jones continues to frustrate at times.  He had a good statistical game scoring 17 points and making 11 free throws, but he also took 12 shots only connecting on 3.  To put it politely, Jones needs to work on being more of a team player. When he passes the ball he can be a beast – look at the production between TJ and Harrellson from the Louisville game.  But this was not one of his better passing games, and as a few people have mentioned, just as Polson gets the SHOOOOOOOOT chant, Jones was getting some PAAAAAAASSSSSS chants by the end of the game.

-Not to go unnoticed though was the production from Drew Franklin’s former class mate.  Jon Hood finally got some time that a lot of people have been wanting to see, and preformed pretty well during it.  He got a huge rebound-put back that had a lot of Rupp excited, Calipari included.  But most importantly – when Hood got in he stayed in.  Normally it’s a lack of defense that gets Hood pulled, but he performed well enough on that side of the ball that he logged 20 minutes and had a fairly productive day.

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