A (2:58)
Welcome everyone. It is the local Trader Dealers KSR post game show. The Cats play a hard fought game in Gainesville but lose 92 to 83 to the Florida Gators who are probably playing as well as anybody in the country and took a huge lead against Kentucky early and was able to hold throughout the rest of the game. You can give us a shout on this Valentine's night. Some of you may be on your way to dinner. To all of you couples out there, enjoy your meal. Billy is cooking for his lady after this. But first we got to talk about the game. And it was unfortunately the beginning was kind of what we've been used to in these games. Kentucky has now played 25 games this season and they have been down at least 12 points in the first half in 12 of the 25 games. That's really, really bad. Essentially one out of every two games they've been down by 12 points. And if you throw out the games against teams that stink, you've sickly been down by 12 points in the first half in two out of every three games against power conference teams. That's really not good. And it happened again today. Kentucky got down 15 in the first half and it looked to me like they were about to get blown off the floor. I mean it was 32, 17 I think and I thought they were maybe one or two more baskets from, you know, just being destroyed. But then they came out, got a 90 run and for most of the rest of the game it kind of fluctuated between about 5 and 12 throughout the game. I never really felt like Kentucky was in a position to come back and win, but they also were not only competitive, I thought for a lot of the, the, not the last 25 to 27 minutes. I thought Kentucky was better in a lot of those sequences. They did a lot of things right. But ultimately I think they lost for, for three reasons. I'm going to say the first two first because I think they're more important than the third. A lot of self inflicted errors by Kentucky and specifically for me the most frustrating one is, is miss layups. I this team missed 15 layups tonight and this has been an issue all year. We got guys who we, we have two problems. We got guys who get to the basket and miss layups. By my count, oh way missed four of those 15. But that I could be, it might have been more but I know it was four and so that's the first problem. And I don't really understand why. Some of it is because Florida is very good at rim protection on defense. And I think one of those four he missed because of good rim protection, but then he missed three that he was there. He just didn't finish. And, and it feels like that has happened all year. He does not finish well from the left side of the basket and he, I think he prefers driving that way. He goes left more than he goes right and he misses him. And then our bigs, Billy, sometimes I think when our bigs get an offensive rebound, their strategy is just to throw it as hard against the glass as possible and hope it goes in like literally. I think they get an offensive rebound and they just like, just launch it at the goal. No touch. I mean, we, I, we had at least two, maybe three offensive rebounds where the put back hit. Just backboard, no rim, just backboard. So 15 layups will get you, I mean if you hit, if you have five of the 15, you know, it's a one point. It's, you know, we, we win now. I don't think that's how the game plays out, but you're right there, so you can't miss all those layups. The second thing was I thought for stretches of the game, Kentucky was very poor defensive rebounding and closing out on threes, which are probably the two things that are. One of them is the most important thing you have to do against Florida, which is defensive, which is rebound. And we did a pretty good job for a lot of the game. But then we had that stretch where I think they got nine shots and four possessions. And I think they scored in all of those possessions and none of which were on the first shot. That, that kills us. You know, early in the game we actually did a pretty good job keeping them off the glass, but you saw their toughness kind of show through in the second half. Moreno had 11 rebounds, so he actually, I thought, played pretty well. But Yellow Bitch and Garrison and Moreno, to some extent, they get the ball taken from them, you know that they'll actually get the hand on the rebound, but then the other then Florida's guys would just kind of out tough them to get the ball. And I think you saw that it wasn't an issue the whole game, but it was an issue in key points. They out rebound us by eight, which is a lot. But at the same time, you know, that's the second best rebounding margin, Billy, any team's had against, against Florida all year. And it was eight behind. That's how much they control the Glass. So I thought they did okay on that most of the game, but it hurt him in key positions. And then early, the deficit in large part came because they were hot early. You know, they hit, what was it, 11 threes for the game. And they're. They were 350th in the 10. They were 350th in the country coming into the game in 3.3 pointers made. And Lee and the kid off the bench, number seven, hit eight between the two of them. And Lee especially, he's played well in the last few games, but that's not how he's played all year. And that hurt us. Now with that said, Mark Pope said after the game, I think he's right. He said he didn't feel like he put the right defenders on them, and I think that's correct. Chandler really struggled with Lee early. Couldn't fight through the screens and Lee got open looks and you just can't allow a guy coming off the bench to hit five threes against you. That crushed him. So you give Florida ten threes, you give them those offensive rebounds and, and you missed those layups and really that's the difference in the game in a lot of ways. You know, I also thought the officiating was terrible. We didn't lose because the officiating, but it was terrible in the second half. It was, there was just a discrepancy. There was. I mean, it's, it's not why we lost, but it, there was there and anybody that says there wasn't, you didn't see the same game I did. I thought in the first half it was fine, but second half, I think there was a discrepancy. So nevertheless, I'm generally pretty encouraged by the game, which led to, has led to some people online going, oh, you know, you're starting to moral victories. And no, I mean, Florida's good. They're the defending national champion and they're playing as well as anybody in the country. And we're going to their arena. I did not expect to win. We were 13 and a half point underdog. And not only did I not expect to win when we were down 15 in the first half, I would have bet most of my money we were going to lose by 30. And then I think we played really well and I think we showed that while I do think they're better, they're not on a level that we cannot win. We can win in rup. I don't know if we will, but we can. And we made a lot of mistakes and still played and still had a chance. Chandler obviously hits a bunch of threes. That's big. Thought Moreno played well. Aberdeen was great. Aberdeen going back to where he played, gotta give him a lot of credit. And he had that run where he got us back in the game almost single handedly. Aberdeen I thought was, was really, really good. I thought Diabate had really good minutes as well. Away was not good and so he was what, 4 for 14. 4 for 14. I talked about those miss layups. I don't think he played particularly well in stretches on defense, you know, always defense often coincides with his offense. When his offense is going well, I think he becomes a lockdown defender when it's not. It can ebb and flow and there was some of that. So the reason I'm a little encouraged is if we don't start making layups better and if we don't start closing out on three point shooters and if OE doesn't play well, then we're not going to win. I think that's objective, I think that's clear. But if those things happen. We just played one of the best teams in the country on their floor and with those things not happening, we still had a shot to win the game. Well, not a shot to win the game. We stayed to the where we were in fighting distance. That gives me encouragement. It's not a moral victory. Part of the reason we don't have, part of the reason they're a lot better than us is we did not bring in the right players, we don't always play smart, etc. Etc. But this is not like a lost cause the way it looked four weeks ago. They're 17 and eight, they have six games left. They got Georgia coming in Tuesday night. Georgia just lost by 16 at Oklahoma. You've got to win that game. You're gonna have Vandy and Florida come to you. You can, you know, I think you can win both those. You need to win one for sure. And then you go to Auburn, you go to the A and M team that's kind of reeling an Auburn team that's been way inconsistent and a South Carolina team you can beat. If you were to finish that stretch four and two, which is imminently doable, you could be 12 and six in the SEC. I think you'll end up with like a six seed or a seven seed in the tournament. And you know, it's all about the draw you get now, is that what we wanted at the start of the year? No. But considering where we were a Few weeks ago, I think it's a lot better than we would have thought. So I was encouraged by today. A lot of guys, especially Aberdeen, Chandler, Moreno and Diabate, I thought all really stepped up. I thought Yelovich had some positive moments. He also really struggled on defensive rebound, but he all. But he had some positive moments for us too, but overall, generally pretty encouraged and I think we have a shot in that final game and rup, if we get the atmosphere that I want to have there, we got a shot to Maybe, maybe steal one. 859-280-2287. We will take your calls. It's Valentine's Day night, Billy. I don't know if people, if they call, if that means they don't have Valentine's Day plans or they're either on their way, but either way, this is almost like an appetizer for Valentine's Day.
