Kentucky’s recent work on improving rebounding is paying off

Kentucky basketball just secured their fifth top 15 win of the season, the most of any team in college basketball this season. Not just that, but the Wildcats outrebounded #11 Texas A&M, who is the best defensive rebounding team in the country, and showed some fight against the very physical and chippy Aggie squad. Amari Williams led the Wildcats with 12 rebounds, and guard Jaxson Robinson added 8 boards as Kentucky’s leading rebounders.

The Wildcats have pounding improving rebounding into their heads in the last few weeks, and the hard work in practice to improve that and be tough enough to attack the glass against very physical teams is now paying off. Mark Pope has taken notice, and he is loving their improvement in that area. It all starts with every play doing his part.

“One of the things we’ve been talking about is our guards making a bigger impact. Otega (Oweh) had 8 last game. Jax(son) (Robinson) had seven this game. That is a massive difference maker for us on the glass. It’s pretty great. …When our guys dig into a focus, it might not be an immediate payoff in a day but over the course of a week or two weeks or a month, these guys every single time answered the bell, actually got better. For us to be 40, 30 (rebound totals) and we are going to out offensive rebound them by one and we are going to hold two of the best offensive rebounders in the entire country, their starting five and backup five to only one offensive rebound between them, that’s an epic effort by our guys and I’m really proud. I’m saying that because we have so much respect for what Texas A&M does on the glass. They are incredible on the glass. …They offensive rebound 44% of the opportunities. That’s an insane number, and they came in as number one in the country.”

– Pope on Kentucky’s rebounding.

After Kentucky got absolutely bulied on the glass, out-physicalled there and a lot of other areas in their 12-point loss to Georgia, they have really answered all of the “soft” comments from people and have became much more physical and putting up better rebounding numbers. They’ll face another top rebounding team in the country in #4 Alabama on Saturday in Rupp Arena.