Connect with us

Kentucky

ESPN predicts the winner between the Kentucky Wildcats and Ole Miss Rebels

Published

on

ESPN predicts the winner between the Kentucky Wildcats and Ole Miss Rebels


Mark Pope and the Kentucky Wildcats are coming off their most deflating loss of the season against Arkansas, but in the SEC this season, there is no time to hang your head.

The Kentucky Wildcats will have to go on the road on Tuesday to take on a very good Ole Miss team. The Rebels are 16-6 on the season and 5-4 in SEC play. Like the Wildcats, the Rebels are on a skid, losing four of their last five games. Chris Beard’s team does have an impressive road win over the Alabama Crimson Tide in conference play, holding the nation’s top offense to only 64 points.

Kentucky’s team is known for being veteran-led, but this Ole Miss team is full of veteran players. The Rebels have seven players who have scored 1,000 points in their college basketball careers, which is unheard of for a college basketball team.

Sean Pedulla is the leading scorer for Ole Miss as the Virginia Tech transfer is averaging 15.2 points per game. Pedulla put up 29 points in the loss to Auburn on Saturday, so when he gets going, the 6’1 guard can score a lot of points.

Advertisement

ESPN gives the Wildcats a 41.6% chance to win this game on the road so Kentucky could be staring down its fifth SEC loss. Coach Pope’s team does seem to step up when the odds are against them, so the Wildcats have to find a way to win this ball game.

They will likely have to do it without guard Lamont Butler, who has missed the Wildcat’s last two games.



Source link

Continue Reading
Advertisement
Click to comment

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *

This site uses Akismet to reduce spam. Learn how your comment data is processed.

Kentucky

Kentucky must now balance injury disaster and maintaining the resume

Published

on

Kentucky must now balance injury disaster and maintaining the resume


Up five with 3:51 to go, Texas went on a 14-1 run to go up 78-70 with 34 seconds left on the clock. It was an absolute collapse, a stretch that saw Kentucky miss all four of its shot attempts, give up four offensive rebounds and turn the ball over twice as the Longhorns finished 5-6 with eight made free throws. With Mark Pope seen as the media darling of this cycle and Rodney Terry coaching for his job seemingly by the game at this point, it was the latter earning the tip of the cap for his team’s late-game execution on both ends as he lives to see another day leading the program.

How much credit does Texas get compared to the blame Kentucky deserves for crumbling in that final segment? Is it as simple as the Wildcats missing Lamont Butler, Jaxson Robinson and Kerr Kriisa, just not having the juice to get over the finish line? Pope will tell you that’s not the case. 

Advertisement

“I have a good team,” he said. “The guys on the court are good players, and we’re good enough to win. These guys have proven that. We just didn’t do it in the last three minutes and 45 seconds tonight. That’s just it. It’s super painful. It’s not acceptable.”

But is it truly unacceptable for Kentucky to find itself down three lead guards — two being the team’s second- and third-leading scorers — and lose in a true road game to a desperate Texas team that had lost four of five in the SEC whose coach had just been booed on his home floor days before? You respect Pope being his own harshest critic in that moment, but it’s a nuanced conversation with some grace deserved given the circumstances while also not giving the Wildcats a total pass.

On one hand, you can say with confidence Kentucky was missing what Butler provides defensively and as a playmaker to go with Robinson’s shot-making. Tre Johnson went nuclear for a career-high 32 points while Tramon Mark added a season-high 26 points — Butler undoubtedly slowing down some of that production while helping assist on more than 10 of the team’s 26 made baskets. Then with the shooting, the Wildcats went just 6-24 from three on the day, good for 25.0 percent. Take away two garbage-time threes from Travis Perry and Otega Oweh in the final 18 seconds and the team hit just four shots from deep with the game still within reach, three coming in the first half. Don’t discount Robinson’s length at 6-7 limiting Johnson (6-6) and Mark (6-5) some, too.

Advertisement

On the other, Koby Brea is way too good to score four points on zero made field goals, snapping his streak of a made 3-pointer in every game as a Wildcat. He finished 0-6 overall and 0-4 from three in a team-high 35 minutes. Oweh’s double-digit scoring streak was extended with a 20-point night, but his three turnovers — two in the second half — were as costly as any of the team’s 13 while the defensive lapses came at excruciating times. Perry also had two second-half turnovers to give him three overall, plus seven combined from the bigs in Amari Williams (3), Andrew Carr (2) and Brandon Garrison (2). Texas turned those cough-ups into 21 points off turnovers compared to 12 for the Cats. Self-inflicted mistakes that wouldn’t have been totally erased at full strength. As Pope made clear after the loss, focus wasn’t where it needed to be, which is inexcusable for this group considering the let-down performances in similar matchups against Clemson, Ohio State, Georgia, Vanderbilt, Arkansas and Ole Miss.

This isn’t new for the Wildcats, unfortunately.

“We’re at that point in the season where these late-game situations, they’re going to become increasingly heated,” Pope said. “We have incredibly painful moments from this game where we weren’t present. We will learn from that.”

Advertisement

Thing is, there are only six regular season games remaining, then only two guaranteed matchups from there, one in Nashville and one in the NCAA Tournament — barring a catastrophic meltdown on the season, obviously. They’re learning on the fly shorthanded, but the opportunities are extremely limited this point forward and you simply have to take the the winnable games as they come. Kentucky did not do that on Saturday in Austin.

Whether Butler, Robinson and/or Kriisa are out days or weeks or permanently, we can’t just punt on the season with losses dismissed and wins celebrated with confetti pouring down from the rafters. We’re not going to throw a temper tantrum about this loss because, again, Quad 1 road games are hard and they’re infinitely harder without three key contributors. And as the Selection Committee made clear earlier in the day, Kentucky’s injury situation will be taken into consideration with the Wildcats currently slotted at No. 10 overall as a No. 3 seed — “We think we’ve got them in the right spot,” Selection Chair member Bubba Cunningham said, adding “Kentucky had great wins.”

But when you’re up five with 3:51 to go, you find a way to win. You find a way to make shots and come up with stops, no matter who is on the floor. The Wildcats did neither and left Austin with a sixth loss in the SEC and eighth overall.

Advertisement

As we look ahead to a home rematch vs. Vanderbilt on Wednesday, a team ranked worse than Texas at No. 42 in the NET and coming to play on your home floor, let’s remind ourselves of Pope’s accountability after the loss and not lose sight of that standard. The Selection Committee loves the resume now with eight Quad 1 wins while also keeping an open mind with the team’s injury situation, but that tune can shift in a hurry if the Wildcats aren’t careful. With four Quad 1 matchups ahead to wrap up the regular season, Kentucky can’t have the same lack of focus in the last segment of the season it did in the last segment of the game against Texas.

Things can still get away from this group, just as we saw inside the Moody Center. It’s their job now to not blow this resume up right before they earn the reward four weeks away on Selection Sunday — no matter the disaster injury situation today.



Source link

Advertisement
Continue Reading

Kentucky

Lamont Butler, Jaxson Robinson, Kerr Kriisa injury updates: Kentucky learns status of guards vs. Texas

Published

on

Lamont Butler, Jaxson Robinson, Kerr Kriisa injury updates: Kentucky learns status of guards vs. Texas


Kentucky is in some trouble injury-wise heading into their showdown with Texas on Saturday, as Lamont Butler, Jaxson Robinson and Kerr Kriisa will be out, according to the SEC’s latest injury report.

“Kentucky is expected to be without all 3 of its point guards today at Texas: Lamont Butler, Jaxson Robinson and Kerr Kriisa all listed as out on the SEC injury report,” Jeff Goodman of The Field of 68 posted on X.

Advertisement

It’s certainly not the news Wildcats fans were hoping to hear before the team’s 8 p.m. ET showdown at the Moody Center. The clash will represent the first meeting between the two teams since the Longhorns joined the SEC in July last year.

Still, Kentucky has bounced back and is on a two-game win streak, after losing back-to-back games against Arkansas and Ole Miss. Most recently, the ‘Cats secured a season sweep over Tennessee, with a 75-64 win over the Volunteers on Tuesday.

Unlike Kentucky, February hasn’t been kind to the Longhorns. Texas has lost three straight games and will be hungry to pick up a win on Saturday. Evidently, oddsmakers expect the Longhorns’ desperation to play a factor against the Wildcats.

Advertisement

According to FanDuel, Texas is a 1.5-point favorite against Kentucky. The Longhorns are -125 on the money line and over/under is set at 157.5 points.

If both teams produce their usual offensive output, they’ll easily hit the over. Texas is averaging 78.6 points per game while UK is averaging 86.3, the third-most in the nation. On Saturday, oddsmakers seemingly expect Texas to slow down Kentucky’s explosive offense.

As for ESPN’s BPI,a model designed to provide a statistical comparison between two teams and predict future success, it agrees with FanDuel, expecting Texas to escape with a narrow victory. Kentucky-Texas boasts the fifth-highest BPI matchup quality of all college basketball games on Saturday.

Advertisement

On the other hand, KenPom is another predictive system for college basketball. It’s designed to show how strong a team is at a given time, without taking factors like injuries into account. Unlike Las Vegas, KenPom projects Kentucky to pull out the victory over the Longhorns.

All the prediction will be thrown out the window on Saturday though, and fans can catch the highly-anticipated showdown between Kentucky and Texas on ESPN at 8 p.m. ET. They can also stream the SEC Showdown on FuboTV.

Advertisement

Texas will have the homecourt advantage over UK as the two teams face off in the Moody Center, which holds approximately 15,000 people. The Wildcats can expect to be in front of a full house on Saturday.

— On3’s Grant Grubbs contributed to this article.



Source link

Advertisement
Continue Reading

Kentucky

Kentucky emergency management preparing for this weekend’s heavy rain

Published

on

Kentucky emergency management preparing for this weekend’s heavy rain


FRANFORT, Ky. (WKYT) – Kentucky has dealt with a lot of nasty weather so far this winter. Next on deck is heavy rain that will dump several inches of rain statewide. Flooding is going to be a major concern.

“With the previous events we’ve had earlier here in the week with the snow and additional rain, we know there could be some significant issues especially in our areas that have the rivers and other streams,” said Dustin Heiser, assistant director of operations for Kentucky Emergency Management.

With Governor Beshear declaring a state of emergency, that opens up a lot more help if needed.

“We will have our rescue teams and National Guard on standby. Our National Guard partners are fantastic partners. We will have guardsman ready tomorrow morning to respond to situations as the need arises,” said Heiser.

Advertisement

Heiser said the July 2022 floods in eastern Kentucky were the last time they were this alert about a potential flooding problem. Paying attention to officials and reacting to warnings is important.

“We know we are going to see flooding across the Commonwealth. You know please head any warnings that come out from the weather service, local emergency management, local public officials,” Heiser said.

Always be ready to act if high water threatens you.

“Have a plan for what you’re going to do when you receive that warning. Know that if you do live in a low lying area, be sure to have an exit plan. Is that some place I can go to a friend’s house, a family member’s house or is that hey I just need to have an idea of how to get to higher ground,” said Heiser.

If you are driving and see standing water ahead of you, turn around, don’t drown.

Advertisement

Heiser said the state’s emergency operation center will be open starting at 8 am Saturday. It’ll be open 24 hours a day as long as it’s needed.



Source link

Continue Reading

Trending