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Perhaps one of the most surprising moments in last week’s Southeastern Conference Tournament came during the Kentucky-LSU game when Alex Poythress ran up to Kentucky teammate Julius Randle during a timeout and gave him a chest bump.
That seemed a bit out of character for Poythress, a sophomore who seldom shows emotion on the court.
“I don’t really know why I did it,” said Poythress. “But if we keep playing well, I will keep on doing it.”
Why?
“It’s just the fun of playing basketball and you need to act like you love it and show people that we love playing.
That’s all I was trying to do,” Poythress said. “We need to have fun playing with each other out there, so I was just trying to have fun while I was trying to help us keep winning.”
Poythress’ display did not come as a surprise to Randle.
“That is Alex. You all may think it was out of character for him, but Alex gets pretty hyped,” Randle said. “It was actually pretty exciting when he did it because we all feed off each other’s energy and everybody noticed what he did.”
Assistance: Freshman point guard Andrew Harrison had eight assists against LSU and then a career-high nine the next day against Georgia before getting only two against Florida in the SEC title game. However, coach John Calipari said on his weekly radio show that Harrison should have had more against Florida based on passes he made if teammates had hit shots.
“When he is looking for people and trying to find the open man and we can just spot up and look for ways to score and attack it really helps our offense and game,”
Poythress said about Harrison.
“He has had a couple of great games. We just need him to keep playing like that. He controlled tempo, he ran the team, he passed when he needed to, he shot when he needed to. He hit some big free throws, too. We just need him to keep doing that like he did all three games in the tournament. When he does that, we are so much better.”
Defending Calipari: Randle admits this season has been “harder” than he thought it would be. However, he has not lost faith in Calipari or the way he has pushed him to improve.
“The biggest thing is Coach has had our back the whole way. He has never wavered,” Randle said. “He has just kept pushing us, pushing us and we are starting to click. He has helped make men out of us. He has taught us how we should play.”
Learning: Sophomore Willie Cauley-Stein says the UK freshmen this year didn’t have to face the strain last year’s team did when UK failed to make the NCAA tourney after a loss to Vanderbilt in the first game of the SEC tourney.
“The struggle last year was people saying that you’re not going to make it, and then you’ve got some people saying that you have this amount of chance if you win this game, this game, this game, and then it puts a whole ‘nother pressure on you for it. This is a different feel. Like, I can’t explain it,” Cauley-Stein said.
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