A chance to be the nation's best defensive team

By: LARRY VAUGHT

LEXINGTON — One thing Kentucky coach John Calipari never told Devin Booker when he was being recruited is that he would have a chance to be part of the nation’s best defensive team.

“No, he never said that,” said Booker, one of the nation’s best prep shooters when he was recruited by UK. “But we want to be one of the best defensive teams ever. I know that’s a big statement, but everyday we just go at each other in practice and I think that’s what makes it better for us.”

Kentucky certainly looked the part Sunday night when it dismantled Montana State 86-28 and held the visitors to 11 points in the first half. Montana State shot 19.7 percent (12-for-61 from the field) — the second UK foe in five games to shoot under 20 percent. And don’t forget that then No. 5 Kansas managed only 12 second-half points against UK last week.

Sophomore center Dakari Johnson, who had 13 points and eight rebounds, said Calipari challenged the team to be the best defensive team ever — something the Wildcats think they can do.

“It just felt like our defensive mentality was getting into them and stuff like that. We just played a good defensive game,” Johnson said after UK blocked 12 shots, including six by freshman Karl-Anthony Towns. “It’s kind of like the game we had against Kansas. It was just a good job of helping each other on defense.

“I think we can be the best defensive team. We have the athletes for it. It’s just a matter of playing hard and being well conditioned.”

Calipari said Kentucky “didn’t exactly knock it out of the park again, offensively” after his team started the game 0-for-10 from the field and missed six 3-point shots when Montana State packed its zone defense inside the free throw lane.

“But we were so good defensively, it made it easy for us,” the UK coach said after his team shot 43.3 percent (29 of 67 from the field).

Kentucky forced 21 turnovers and it took Montana State almost two minutes to get the ball across midcourt to start the game.

“With Willie (Cauley-Stein) and Marcus Lee on the ball, they make it a lot easier for us guards. And then them coming in and trapping with their length, that makes it a lot easier. But we just try to play defense and we take pride in it,” Booker, who admitted he seldom played hard defense in high school because his job was to score. “Every team wants to play defense, but that’s what we stress the most.”

Kentucky had a 26-0 run to start the second half and held Montana State to the fewest points any team had scored against UK in the shot clock era.

“I loved how we defended. We didn't look at the score, we just worried about each possession and that's what you have to do in games like this,” Calipari. “I hated that the score was that lopsided. But again, I'm trying to — I got a team here that I'm trying to deal with and make sure they're getting better.”

Booker had 18 points on 6-for-8 shooting from the field and in the second half had outscored Montana State 18-17 by himself. He said Calipari told the players to “take pride” in playing defense.

“That’s the most important part. And just, you have to do it as a collective group. It’s not going to be just one man guarding his man. We all have to play defense for each other, and not just guard your man, guard your teammate’s man, too,” Booker said. “Once you take pride in guarding somebody and shutting them out, that makes it more fun, once you challenge yourself to do it. As you can see when we hold teams down to points like that, it’s definitely fun.”

Did he know UK had held Montana State scoreless for over 10 minutes in the second half and for almost 13 minutes going back to the first half.

“Obviously every possession you don’t want a team to score, so you know, we just took it one possession at a time and halfway through the second half we kind of noticed they hadn’t scored, and we just kept playing defense. But they got the bucket and we were kind of disappointed, but we just kept playing,” Booker said. “I mean, we found out like, ‘Wow, they still have 11 points. We must be playing good defense.’ So, I mean, it wasn’t really a disappointment, I guess (when Montana State scored). We were just having fun with it.”

Towns, who had eight points and 10 rebounds to go with his six blocks, said the Cats pay attention to what the opponent is scoring and not their own point total.

“We’re trying to keep them to as low amount of points as possible. When we saw that 11 (in the second half), we really wanted to keep it to 11. We didn’t even talk about offense the whole time,” Towns said. “We just talked about making sure we hold them to 11, don’t let them move from 11.

“ If they have video of us on the bench when they scored the two points, I think it was an underneath, opposite-side layup, you should have saw us. We were very disappointed. But we’re trying to keep the points to as low as possible.”