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Matt Jones (0:00)
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Matt Jones (0:30)
Welcome everyone. It is the local toy dealers KSR Post Game show what an awesome night as the Cats get yet another victory against the top 25 team. Their fourth victory so far this year against teams ranked in the top 12 in the net. Kentucky wins in Starkville for the 19th straight time they win a regular season game over Mississippi state, this time 95 to 90. We'll open up the phones after we finish this segment. The text machine is 772-7745254. Just a huge gutsy, gutsy win by Kentucky tonight. Absolutely. You know, about as gutsy as it gets to go on the road play in what was a great environment. I mean Starkville, you know, if you watch a Mississippi State Georgia game on a Wednesday, it might not be a great crowd but when they want to be loud, they can be loud. And it was like that tonight. Students staying out all day to get ready and Kentucky comes in and wins. There's a lot of things you can talk about but for me I want to go over the players in a second but just overall to come out and start the second half like they did and get up 14, I mean that's a huge, a huge margin to pull but then lose it in two minutes. It went from 14 to two in two game minutes and they actually fell down at one point by three. And then to come back and win on the road in the last two minutes, have it cut to one with the crowd going insane and then you still hold on and get a victory. I mean that's a massive win. That's a massive win for this team. It is now the second time that they've gone and taken kind of a disappointing loss in a back to back stretch and then gone and won a harder game right after like they did after losing to Clemson when they beat Gonzaga, lose to Georgia and beat Mississippi State. They are now 4 and oh against ranked teams and I actually think that number is about to increase. It'll be, I think Georgia will be. Excuse me, Louisville may get ranked, at which point it will be five. Now, Georgia may get ranked and then they. They have a loss. But against teams ranked, when you play them, four, no. And they've now won on neutral court. They've won at home, they've won on the road. I mean, when this team is clicking offensively, they can beat anybody in the country. And I think that became clear today. And most importantly for me, they get a true road win in a tough environment. And those are going to be hard to come by in the sec. I will say, though, today was kind of, I think, a day of separation in the sec because five teams that maybe are the five best teams in the conference, Auburn, Tennessee, Alabama, Florida and Kentucky, all go on the road against good teams and they all win close games, all five of them. And it might be the case that we look back and go, okay, that's when the five that were the best in the league kind of kind of separated themselves. As far as Kentucky, I mean, the two major stories are obviously Jackson Robinson, who was just brilliant for 25 minutes. I mean, he had 27 points, but he had 25 of them in the first, in the first 25 minutes of the game. And he was great, hit seven threes, looked comfortable in the flow. You know, I've said a lot over the last. Well, I've said all year, much to the chagrin of some people, that I think he's the most important player on the team in terms of us reaching, being great, because I don't think we can be great unless he is great. And tonight he was great. He was great against Gonzaga. And that's what we got. That's what we got to have, is we got to have him playing at that level. He's not going to always be 9 for 12 in the field like he was tonight. But the game, he totally changed the game. Not in the first half, in the second half, but also once he made his 7 3. Mississippi State's entire defense became do not let him get the ball, which opened up the court for a way to get two or three layups that I don't think he gets otherwise. Carr was able to get three shots at the basket, in part because he didn't get doubled because they would not leave Robinson. And then Almanor was able to get free because they were not leaving Jackson Robinson. And you don't do that unless you've scored the 25 points before. And then the second guy is Ansley Almanor. You know, we've talked a lot about him on this show. I, Mario has finally stopped texting me every single time he scores. But I wish he had tonight because three threes, I mean, three threes in a crunch time of the game when he hadn't even really played that much came in. You got to love the confidence and we needed him. Honestly, if he doesn't hit those, Kentucky doesn't win. It was also crucial. We were down two when he hit his first one. I think you could make an argument that that one, the first one he hit might have been the biggest shot of the game because we were down two with the momentum going away from us. And he hits that three and by the time he hits his third, the two point deficit was a seven point lead. And you know, he to me is the number two in hockey. They give three stars. He would be number two for me because of the way he hit those shots. But going beyond him, you know, I think, I think everybody that played significant minutes made a big play. It wasn't the best game for away, but he had, looking back, I think, two huge, huge plays. One of them, you know, we had been up 14, they cut it to 5, he comes and gets a dunk that kind of keeps, keeps the momentum. At one point we, they had cut it to or they took the lead, went up to. He hit the dunk, the layup that tied the game. So he made big shots. He had a little baseline jumper, I think that made it 86, 80. And he played good defense most of the game. Lamont Butler at times was off, but hit the three at the end of the first half and then hit the kind of game ceiling shot at the end. And maybe more importantly, when Mississippi State had the ball down three, he suffocated. Hubbard on defense, caused him to force a shot that didn't go and we win the game. You know, Amari Williams drives me crazy with keeping his hands down to the side, but he had a double double and you know, had 12 and I think 12 and 10 or 12, 11 had six assists. Andrew Carr, not a great Andrew Carr game, but when the game was in the 70s, he had three layups at the basket, each of which were again big in the moment that he made them. But just overall, just, just a gutsy victory. You know, great teams win games on the road like this. And I think this, you know, we've talked again a lot this year about how if you watch Pope's BYU team last year, they beat somebody great and they might struggle against somebody else. I think that's what going to be what this team is. I think they're going to kind of be, well, you have a great game and then I don't know what happens. Every game is going to be nerve wracking. I mean we've played, I've watched a lot of college basketball this year. I think we've the three best games I've seen have been involving us, uk, Gonzaga, uk, Florida and then tonight those are the three best games I think I've seen and we've been in all of them. It's going to be exciting. And the thing I like about this team is if it's close down the stretch, I feel good about us winning. You go back to our losses. Two of them were routes and even in the Clemson game we were kind of behind the whole game. But when the game is contested we are by my count at least five. And oh in games that really come down the stretch, including throwing in the Louisville one. Well, so really happy for the victory. You got two more tough ones coming now at home. I said there's this pack of teams that I think are kind of the tier two teams. Florida, Kentucky, Mississippi State, Ole Miss and who's my other one? Florida, Kentucky, Mississippi State, Ole Miss. Well, there was somebody else, I can't remember. Well, we're now 20 in those games. Oh, Texas A and M and we get the third one on Tuesday night. We'll get a chance to maybe go three and O against these tier two teams, which is huge not only for the overall record, but will also be huge when it comes to seeding and when it comes to SEC tournament seating because it'll be tiebreakers. So these are big victories and to win one on the road, they split these games one and one. We said when they played Gonzaga and Clemson we wanted to win one, we won the harder one said the same thing this week at Georgia, at Mississippi State, win one. We ended up winning the hard one again. And finally, before we take a break and get to your calls, I just posted if you were to go to to Twitter, I just posted two things back to back that I just I love and I want you if you get a chance to go look at it. One of them somebody sent me just a few minutes ago is a retired police officer. His name's Mike. He had Billy quadruple bypass surgery. I said today, I guess it was yesterday. And he is in ICU and he's sitting there in ICU and he apparently told the people they had to Put him in a place where he could watch a TV so he could see the Mississippi State game.