Well, a couple of things happened – first, let’s look at the positives. Doron Lamb is steadily making his case for a starting position. Lamb had 24 points, 2 rebounds and 3 assists. He was very accurate and very dependable overall, which is why he got the ball for the last shot of the game. Three-point shooting was also good – Miller, Lamb and Knight each drained 3 from 3-point land (which is probably what kept UK in the game).
Now for what went wrong. The first thing that stood out was the shutdown of Terrence Jones. Jones was 3 of 17 on shooting for a total of 9 points with 1 block and 1 steal. The next thing that proved the Cats’ downfall was [STRIKE]poor officiating[/STRIKE] foul trouble. By halftime, both Harrellson and Vargas had 3 fouls. Before the end of the game, Knight, Jones, Harrellson and Vargas had all fouled out and Liggins and Miller each had 3. North Carolina by comparison, had only one player in foul trouble (Tyler Zeller with 4 fouls). The Cats were actually better shooting from the charity stripe (76% vs. 70%), but the Tarheels went to the line 37 times vs. Kentucky’s 21. Also, Knight is still going to need to work on getting his teammates more involved, as he again had more turnovers than assists (6 to 4).
I just wonder if, had Harrellson had a better game against UNC’s bigs (or if Kanter had been able to play), things would have been different. At least it wasn’t the heralded freshman Harrison Barnes who beat Kentucky, as he was only 4 of 10 shooting with 12 points total and 3 turnovers. No, today it was a combination of things that beat Kentucky – possibly the most glaring being the lack of an inside game. Free Enes.
