Kentucky overwhelmed Serbian pro team Mega Bemax from start to finish in a 100-64 win in the Bahamas Saturday night.
The Wildcats improved to 3-0 on their exhibition trip.
Check out these impressive highlights:
Mega highlights!
Max coverage of dunks!!!#BigBlueBahamas pic.twitter.com/SYsGNRngAA— Kentucky Basketball (@KentuckyMBB) August 12, 2018
Here’s a game recap from UK:
NASSAU, Bahamas – Kentucky has only been together as a team for a couple months. In that time, John Calipari hasn’t spent any time working specifically on defense.
Watching the Wildcats on Saturday night, you wouldn’t know it.
UK turned up the heat on Mega Bemax in both the half-court and full-court in the third game of its Big Blue Bahamas Tour. Facing a physical Serbian professional club that has produced nine NBA Draft picks since 2014, the relentless Cats held their opponents to 30.3-percent shooting in a 100-64 victory.
“I loved our effort,” UK assistant coach Joel Justus said. “Our energy was tremendous. It was an elite performance by our guys. We talked about it. Our guys are young, but they know basketball and they know that that team is a good team, it’s a proud team that plays hard, that’s had tremendous success. They respect that and they came out today and gave an extreme effort.”
That defense is what paved the way for UK to create separation early, as the Cats held Mega Bemax to one point over the course of a stretch of more than six minutes starting at the 17:37 mark of the first half. That fueled a 19-1 run that turned a tie game into a bit of a laugher.
“They love basketball,” Justus said. “This group really does love basketball. They love to be in the gym by themselves, with a couple guys. They love to compete and this was another chance to go and do it against somebody else. This is something that we’re finding out about them and we’re obviously very excited about that.”
On offense, it was a balanced, unselfish effort and a handful of highlight-reel plays that got the job done. UK’s two leading scorers – PJ Washington (20 points, 12 rebounds) and Keldon Johnson (16 points) – had the best of the bench in quick succession in the second half, with Washington throwing down a ferocious one-handed poster dunk in the half-court mere seconds before Johnson did the same with two hands in transition off a perfect alley-oop feed from Quade Green.
“There’s nothing like playing for Kentucky,” Immanuel Quickley said. “You get jitters when we go on a run and we get two dunks back to back like Keldon and PJ had. The whole crowd is screaming. There’s nothing like playing for Kentucky.”
Box Score:
