LEXINGTON - The Kentucky Wildcats learned some valuable lessons and made their fan base happy with Saturday’s 68-66 win over the North Carolina Tar Heels at Rupp Arena, but don’t read too much into the game.
This was an early-season clash between two talented, but young teams, and it will be all-but-forgotten rather soon. If UK and UNC should meet down the road in the NCAA Tournament, both sides will probably be radically different and barely remember this early December contest that left the fifth-ranked Wildcats at 8-0 and the 10th-rated Tar Heels 7-2.
“Neither team is really an experienced team,” North Carolina coach Roy Williams said. “Patrick Patterson and a couple of their guys have played, and for us, Deon (Thompson) and Marcus (Ginyard) have played, but we looked like the really inexperienced team in the first half. We made two or three shots early, and then all of a sudden we didn’t do a very good job sprinting back, and they ran us out of the gym. And then in the second half, perhaps they showed their inexperience a little bit.”
Williams was referring to, arguably, the best 16, 17 minutes of basketball that Kentucky has played since, oh, probably 1996. This came in the first half Saturday when the Wildcats went on a dazzling 28-2 run after North Carolina had jumped out to a 9-2 lead. That put UK on top 30-11 with 8:44 to go before halftime.
The Wildcats led 43-28 at the first-half break.
“I don’t know that I’ve ever coached a team where at halftime they had 12 fast break points and we had zero,” Williams said. “And that (running) is a point of emphasis for us.”
Kentucky freshman guard John Wall had plenty to do with the first-half outburst, of course. Wall was his usual, dazzling self those first 20 minutes, rolling up 13 points, five rebounds and five assists.
“John played terrific,” Kentucky coach John Calipari said of Wall. “His numbers were unbelievable.”
“He dominated the game the first half,” Williams said of Wall. “He really attacks you, and he attacks you with that 6-4 size and long arms and great quickness.
“And the other thing is his teammates were running,” Williams added. “It wasn’t just John. His teammates were running, and that gave him more options. We didn’t give our point guards enough help, and we didn’t do a good job picking up anybody on the break.”
But, again, Kentucky learned a lot in this game. And what the Wildcats learned most of all early in the second half is that they are too dependent on Wall. Wall was cramping going into the locker room at halftime, and some two minutes into the second half, he had to leave the court and get an IV hooked up to him in the locker room as the cramps became unbearable.
He was off the court for nearly seven minutes.
“It took longer than it should because John hates needles,” Calipari quipped.
“I don’t like needles, I don’t like shots, I don’t like nothing,” Wall said. “So I told them, if there’s a needle, you’re going to have to hold my hand or something.”
While Wall was sidelined, the Tar Heels trimmed only four points off Kentucky’s halftime lead. But you could feel the air come out of the Wildcats.
North Carolina was able to slow the tempo, gain some confidence, and start hitting some shots. And as the Tar Heels crept back in it and gained confidence, they started controlling the play inside. And it looked like Kentucky tired under the strain.
“Let’s be honest, it helped us with him getting hurt the second half,” Williams admitted, referring to the absence of Wall, who finished with 16 points, five rebounds, seven assists and seven turnovers in 32 minutes.
“We had to play without John, and we went a little nuts and let a good team make a run at us,” Calipari said. “I’m happy with how this played out.”
Give Kentucky plenty of credit for hanging on, and to be even more specific, give credit to freshman guard Eric Bledsoe. After North Carolina closed within 59-56 with 4:29 to go, Bledsoe - who had not had a good game up to that point - hit 5-of-6 at the free throw line and added a driving layup to seal the victory.
“I shoot a lot of free throws when I’m shooting around by myself, and I just thought about myself shooting free throws with no one around today,” Bledsoe said.
Calipari said Bledsoe’s mental toughness and will showed in that stretch late in the game.
“Let me tell you what’s great about Eric,” Calipari said. “I walked down the bench (late in the game) and Eric said, ‘Coach, put me back in.’ And I looked at him and said, ‘For who?’ He said, ‘For Darnell (Dodson).’ So I put him back in, and what did he do? He basically won the game for us.
“What Eric did is a lesson for all of us,” Calipari added. “It doesn’t matter if you have played awful, at the end of the day, we’re trying to win. So make plays down the stretch, we win, and we’ll talk about it later. And it’s a whole lot better to talk about it after a win than a loss.”
But, again, what does this victory mean for Kentucky?
Let’s put it this way: When asked if this game means that Kentucky basketball is back, Calipari nearly laughed.
“No, we’re not back,” Calipari said. “We’re not a very good team. We had 21 turnovers. There were three times late in the game where we walked out of timeouts and guys were asking each other, ‘Now, what play are we supposed to run?’ We have a lot of things to cure.”
But the good news is most – if not all – the Wildcats’ ailments look to be fixable. Calipari hates the execution of his Wildcats, but loves their heart.
“This part of the season is all about learning, and that’s what I’m trying to do,” Calipari said. “Our execution stinks. It really stinks. But, I like our will to win. They believe they will make something happen and we’ll win the game.”
“We’re a tough team,” said UK junior forward Patrick Patterson, who had 19 points and seven rebounds. “Everybody wants the ball in tough situations, and no one gives up.”
The Wildcats get another chance to see just how tough they are in their next game, Wednesday night against Connecticut at Madison Square Garden.