Stefan's Postgame

By: Stefan Poikonen

It was an ugly game, but it was a win. The Wildcats pulled off a 66-63 win at Auburn to move to 5-2 in conference play and 11-9 overall.
The performance was quite poor, due in large part to the absence of Jodie Meeks and Ramel Bradley. Jodie and Ramel both present scoring threats and when coupled with Joe Crawford and Patrick Patterson, UK has a number of scoring options. But on this night Ramel's leadership and Jodie's presence were not there to aid the Wildcats. UK had a lot of trouble scoring against a bad Auburn team. Crawford's 20 and 2-Pat's 19 were nearly 60% of Kentucky's total points. Only 7 players played for Kentucky, only 6 scoring. I still don't understand why Mark Coury starts. He has started 19 of 20 games for UK, so Billy G must believe he is doing something right.
Turnovers were a huge problem for Kentucky on Wednesday evening. The team committed 24 total turnovers, 10 more than average. Derrick Jasper didn't have a great game, committing 5 turnovers, with only 2 points, 2 rebounds, and 4 assists. I still believe Derrick is our point guard for this year and the next, but he didn't look comfortable out there last night. Hopefully the Cats can resolve the turnover issue before they face Alabama Saturday afternoon. I think the Wildcats are a much better passing team with Ramel Bradley in the game. He is expected to play Saturday.
Patrick Patterson continues to impress, especially with his consistency. Since SEC play has started, Patrick has scored in double figures each game and excepting the Miss. St. game, he has had at least 15 pts. and 6 rebounds each game. He was working constantly inside to get the ball and his effort is very apparent.
After this win the Cats moved up to 96th in the RPI. Although the RPI is far from a perfect system, it has accurately shown that the Cats have made a dramatic improvement since the loss to San Diego, something Big Blue Nation can be proud of.
That's all for now. I hope to have a statistical analysis of the team, individually and collectively sometime this weekend. Til then Akhmed the terrorist: