It took a while, but Kentucky found their Jenga moment against Tennessee Tech

Jenga is a fun game. Played in its original miniature form on living room floors and jumbo form on bar patios, Jenga has spanned the breadth of competitive locales. On Wednesday, Jenga made an appearance on the Rupp Arena hardwood.

Well, sort of.

After struggling to get anything going early against Tennessee Tech, Kentucky found itself in a 25-25 tie with less than six minutes left in the first half. But according to Trent Noah, that’s when the team had their Jenga moment. He didn’t spell it out, but having yanked the wrong wooden block out a time or two in my day, the Jenga moment in basketball is when the team going on a run to break through and turn a close game into a blowout win, effectively collapsing any hope the opposition has of winning.

The way Noah described it, “We were kinda just waiting on our Jenga moment. We finally broke the game open with our pace and how many guys we have, so it was just a matter of time before our Jenga moment was coming, and then it all fell down.”

When asked what that Jenga moment was, whether it was a specific play or a tweak of some sort, Noah recounted the start of the 18-3 run on which the ‘Cats finished the half.

“It was a little stretch when we had two run outs, we hit a 3, it was like a 10-0 run and it happened just like that. We kinda didn’t look back from there.”

The 3 Noah was referencing at the start of the tower’s collapse came from himself, one of four triples the Eastern Kentucky sharpshooter knocked down on the night.

Let’s get to that Jenga moment sooner

A “Jenga moment” might be a clever Pope-ism, but what is stopping this team from knocking the tower down sooner? Big Blue Nation is clamming for the clumsy guy or tipsy girl who knocks over the Jenga tower on their first move instead of not waiting until a team ranked 322 in KenPom is still hanging around late in the first half before sending the structure tumbling.

When asked what is stopping this team from getting to that Jenga moment sooner in games, he responded, “I guess it’s just how the ball bounces sometimes. You shoot three straight 3s and you miss three, but you keep shooting and you make the next three, and it kind of blows the game open. It’s just a matter of time, how the ball bounces, but eventually it’s going to come. We just keep pushing and pushing and pushing.”

The ball has certainly not bounced Kentucky’s way in a number of games early on this season, as first-half struggles continue to plague this group. But to their credit, they keep playing, keep plucking blocks out one by one until they get that Jenga moment. Let’s just hope that they don’t wait too long against the likes of North Carolina and Gonzaga, or else the tower will come crashing down on them.