KSR Today: Kentucky prepares for Auburn in top-15 road battle
Kentucky will be tasked with its second road test in four days on Saturday, as the Wildcats are set to face the No. 2 Auburn Tigers at 1 p.m. ET.
It will be a matchup of top-15 programs — Kentucky sits at No. 12 — but more specifically, two teams with top-20 offenses and defenses in college basketball. The Wildcats are ranked No. 4 in the updated KenPom rankings (No. 4 offense, No. 18 defense), while the Tigers come in ranked No. 6 overall (No. 15 offense, No. 8 defense). UK enters the game averaging 82.9 points per game while allowing 62.8 points per contest, with AU averaging 80.7 points and allowing 65.6 points, respectively.
ESPN’s matchup predictor gives the slight edge to Auburn with a 56.6% chance to win, with Barttorvik projecting the Tigers as a five-point favorite. Official odds will be released later today.
The battle for the SEC lead will be broadcast live on CBS at 1 p.m. ET on Saturday.
John Calipari and Oscar Tshiebwe preview Auburn
What does Coach Cal think about the matchup? The UK head coach will preview his team’s game at Auburn alongside Oscar Tshiebwe starting at 10:15 a.m. ET.
KSR will have all of the coverage you need right here on the website throughout the afternoon.
Bruce Pearl praises Kentucky
While Calipari is set to preview Saturday’s matchup this morning, Auburn head coach Bruce Pearl did so on Thursday. As expected — he previously compared this group to “the Anthony Davis team” in 2012 — Pearl had nothing but praise for the Wildcats.
“Good team. Really good team,” Pearl said. “You look at their offensive numbers. They’re different than most Kentucky teams I’ve coached against. It’s the number one offense in our league. Number one in assists, number one in their transition offense. It’s the best.”
Individually, Pearl singled out Kentucky’s starting backcourt and anchor in the middle as the greatest contributors to the team’s overall success.
“They got three dynamic shooters that are shooting great percentages and shooting them well. Two great point guards and TyTy Washington and Sahvir Wheeler,” Pearl said. “The big kid in the middle could be the Player of the Year in the country. Best rebounder in the country that we’ve seen in a long, long time. Athletic forwards that will be excited about trying to guard Jabari Smith and shut off his water. So it’s a great offensive rebounding team, a great rebounding team. Their rebounding margins are off the charts.”
Shaedon Sharpe is draft eligible
Just months after previously reporting Sharpe was ineligible for the upcoming 2022 NBA Draft, ESPN’s Jonathan Givony changed his tune Thursday, reporting that the five-star guard had met the age and academic requirements to apply for a petition this spring.
“(Sharpe) can apply for the 2022 NBA draft as an early-entry candidate, a source told ESPN on Thursday. … Sharpe started the current school year at Dream City Christian in the Phoenix area, but he had sufficient credits to graduate from high school before the start of the NBA season in October.”
He previously met the age criteria as he turns 19 in May, but the details of his graduation have always been unclear.
“If Shaedon Sharpe is going to play for Kentucky this season, it will likely happen in the next 2-3 games,” Givony said in a follow-up tweet. “If not, he likely sits out and then has a decision to make this spring about whether to enter the NBA Draft. He has some great options either way.”
Kentucky WBB blown out vs. Florida
The wheels have fallen off for the Kentucky women’s basketball team, as the No. 23 Wildcats fell to the unranked Florida Gators (14-5) by a final score of 77-52 to move to 8-6 on the year.
Dre’Una Edwards was ruled out just an hour before tip-off due to disciplinary reasons, leaving Kentucky short-handed from the jump. From there, Rhyne Howard led the Wildcats with 17 points on 7-21 shooting to go with 10 rebounds and three assists. Freshman Jada Walker added 12 points, followed by Jazmine Massengill with 10.
As a team, Kentucky shot just 27 percent overall (18-66) and 22 percent from three (4-18), while Florida knocked down 51.7 percent of shots and 46.7 percent of 3-pointers in the win.
UK will take on Ole Miss at Rupp Arena on Sunday, with tip-off scheduled for noon ET on the SEC Network.
Penny Hardaway and Memphis lose again
Speaking of wheels falling off for basketball programs, look no further than the circus going on in Memphis under Penny Hardaway.
The Tigers suffered their third straight loss to fall to 9-8 on the year, this time at home against SMU by a final score of 70-62. Following the defeat, Hardaway was asked if he was embarrassed by the loss and still felt he could get the job done at Memphis.
His response? Not great. Not great at all.
“I think the one thing I can say to this media, because this media gets kinda f—ed up sometimes when it comes to me. We don’t have our full roster. Y’all know we don’t have our full roster. Stop asking me stupid f—ing questions about if I feel like I can do something. If I had my roster like they did, then I feel like I can do whatever I want to do.
“I’m coaching really hard, my boys are playing really hard, I’m not embarrassed about nothing. We have four freshmen starting, y’all need to act like it. Act like we got 17- and 18- and 19-year-olds out here trying to learn how to play against 22-, 23- and 24-year-old guys. Come on, man. Stop disrespecting me, bro. Like, don’t do that. I work too f—ing hard. I work way too hard for that. Y’all write all these bulls— articles about me and all I do is work. We got young kids on the floor. They got young kids on the floor.”
As a friendly reminder, it was Penny who wanted, and I quote, “all the smoke” when he first got to Memphis.
“This is Memphis, we don’t bluff,” Hardaway said back in 2019. “We want all the smoke, we want everything. We want everything to be about Memphis.”
Now it’s the media’s fault that he can’t win games with the players he signed, including two top-five high school recruits. Excuse me while I pull out my tiny violin.
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