Transcript
Matt Jones (0:00)
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Really the first time this year where they've had a game where they've played pretty well offensively and still were not able to get the victory. In the other games where Kentucky's lost, their point total has been in the 60s. This one was 97 and still a loss. And I thought honestly the better team today won Alabama. A couple things that I thought were crucial to the game ended up playing out before the game. If you were listening yesterday, we said basically two things were important. One was Grant Nelson, because I think the one consistent thing we've seen this year is teams that have a guy at the four, sometimes at the three, but really at the four who is versatile, can shoot from outside and go to the basket. They really give us a hard time, even, you know, going back to Cooper, flag to Asa Newell at Georgia, the two guys at Florida that got all those rebounds. And then again Grant Nelson here today and he had a great first half, 19 points in the first half, 26 points in the game. He was a real issue for us and I thought was really the reason Alabama was ahead at halftime in a half where Kentucky may have even outplayed Alabama but just couldn't really do anything with Grant Nelson. And then the second thing, and it sounds very simplistic, but Drew and I both made the point. These two teams love to shoot threes and they're both good at it. Whoever hits the most will win. Well, you know, Alabama made 13 Kentucky made 11. We lost by five. It really. I'm not saying the whole game can be broken down into something that simple, but it's a pretty important thing. These two teams each have strengths outside of three point shooting, but the one thing they share is three point shooting. And they made two more of them than we did. And we had open looks. We had chances to hit shots that I think if you hit, maybe it's a different ending. Alma or had a couple open threes. I thought Perry in the second half had an open three that was big. Butler had an open three. You know, you miss those. And Alabama in that little run where it was tied 81, 81, and then they scored nine straight points. They hit two open threes in similar situations. And in my opinion, that was maybe even the difference in the game. Some, you know, smaller, smaller things. First of all, I thought even though his stat line looks pretty good and I think he played well defensively, I thought Lamont Butler struggled offensively, especially down the stretch. That little sequence from 81, 81 to 90, 81, you know, obviously is a sequence where they won the game. And Lamont made a couple big mistakes during that. During that sequence, especially on offense. The turnover on the fast break was huge. It was 84, 81. We had a chance to get an easy basket there, maybe even AM one, and he throws it away. Then they come down and hit a three. And then the next Sequel R us, Butler gets a step and gets into the lane, but then throws a lob to Amari. That just really didn't have much of a chance of success. And amari doesn't catch it. 87, 81 becomes 90 to 81 when they hit a three. And then that's kind of that you. I think Amari Williams is, is a. Is really a good player. He hustles a lot. But when he is having to be a centerpiece of your offense, you're good, you're going to struggle. And there were three or four times where he tried to initiate offense by dribbling. I never think that's really a good thing for us. And even throwing lobs to him, I think I saw a stat somewhere that we're one of the worst teams in the country at throwing and executing lobs. And I'm not shocked at that because again, we're not a crazy athletic team. We're a good shooting team, we're a good execution team, but we're not crazy athletic. And I think you see that in lobs where, you know, we try to do stuff that maybe some of our guys, it's, it's not their strong point defensively. You know, you give up 102, it's going to be hard to win. We gave up 100 to Florida and did win. Gave up 102 today. You know, I don't talk about or write a lot about defense because I just don't think we're ever going to be great at defense. I just don't think this team is, is built with guys who are really good defensive players outside of Butler and sometimes away. I mean, I think Carr is a big defensive liability. Bray is a defensive liability, Robinson can be a defensive liability, Perry's a defensive liability. So you get that many guys on the court that are not great defenders, you're never going to be a great defensive team. Now what you can do, however, is, is get loose balls and get rebounds. And we did give up 15 offensive rebounds. Now that's a big number. It didn't crush us though because we actually outscored them on second chance points. We had 13 offensive rebounds, so we gave up 15, which is too many. But I don't think that's why we lost. I think part of the reason we struggled there was 50, 50 balls. You heard Mark Pope say on the post game that he thought we just weren't, we were like a step slow getting to some of those 50, 50 balls. And I kind of agree. Some of their offensive rebounds were long threes that we just really didn't scramble and weren't in a good position for. But you know, defensively you can't give up 102. But I think we're going to give up 102 against teams like that sometimes. They ended up shooting 85% from the free throw line. What were they, Billy, 26 of 30 or something like that from the free throw line.