UK Wins First Game of the Regular Season
Billy is victorious in debut.
Basketball season begins in the Billy Gillespie era with a win. I say that with a straight face even though the opponent was Central Arkansas. No disrespect to CA, but over the past week, we’ve seen two Division One schools get beat by Division II opponents, first there was Grand Valley St. beating Michigan St. and yesterday Findlay beat the Ohio St. I know, both were exhibitions, but that tells you the parity in college basketball.
The game, a 67-40 blowout of CA by big blue was pretty good. Considering that Patrick Patterson only played 13 minutes, dogged by foul trouble, the Cats had plenty of help from senior guard Joe Crawford and soph Mark Coury. Freshman Alex Legion, another of Gillispie’s prized recruits for ‘07 had a solid regular season debut with 6 points and some nice steals. It was a relief to see that even when Patterson went to the bench with foul trouble, there was enough depth there to weather the storm.
The best part for UK fans to see was the new emphasis on pressure man-to-man defense, something that was lacking in the Tubby Smith days. The Cats were playing tight defense all game and had plenty of steals to show for it. Despite holding CA to just 20% shooting, Gillispie still sees room for improvement, “Not very good, their 20 percent wasn’t enough us. It was more them. We set pretty high standards.”
With the win, the Wildcats hit it again tonight at Rupp Arena against Gardner-Webb in second round action of the 2K Sports College Hoops Classic. Gardner-Webb beat Alabama A&M rather easily last night. With Memphis beating Richmond yesterday, it’s looking like the expected UK/Memphis matchup will happen later this week. A big test for the Cats as the Memphis Tigers are final-four favorites heading into the season.
Kentucky basketball, Billy Gillispie
November 8th, 2007 at 6:49 pm
[...] in the Billy Gillispie era, the world came crashing down with the shocking loss to Gardner-Webb. I posted yesterday that this team had some holes, and boy did Gardner-Webb take advantage. Not only did the Cats lose, [...]