Missouri gains needed confidence for Kentucky through overtime win over LSU

By LARRY VAUGHT

Missouri coach Kim Anderson hopes his team gained some needed confidence with an overtime win over LSU Thursday because he knows the Tigers will need it against Kentucky Tuesday night.

"We know we have a tremendously tough game tomorrow night against Kentucky, the best team in the country,” said Anderson on the Southeastern Conference coaches teleconference Monday.

He said he would prefer UK not to be coming off overtime wins over Mississippi and Texas A&M to start SEC play.

“But I think that what we face is certainly a team that has so many different weapons. They're very deep, they're big, they're long. The thing that most impresses me about Kentucky, other than all the things I just said, is when they don't play great, they still find ways to win,” Anderson said. “They did that Saturday against A&M. That's the most impressive thing to me about Kentucky. We all know they have good players and they're very well coached and they have a great fanbase.”

Anderson said it “takes a little bit of luck” along with talent to go through conference play unbeaten, something Florida did last year and UK did in 2012.

“But they're so well coached and they're so good that the most impressive thing for me is they find ways to win even when they're not playing great,” Anderson said.

Missouri (7-8) , which lost at Auburn Saturday, is led in scoring by sophomore forward Johnathan Williams. He is averaging 13.7 points and 7.1 rebounds per game after averaging just 5.8 points per game.

Underclassmen have been playing 66 percent of Missouri’s minutes and seven of the eight top scorers are underclassmen. The exception is senior guard Keith Shamburger, who scored a season-best 21 points at Auburn when he hit five 3-pointers. He averages 9.1 points per game and is fourth in the SEC in free throw shooting at 88.6 percent.

Kentucky coach John Calipari said he was surprised at the confidence Missouri has after losing so many players off last year’s team.

“But their big man is playing well, their wings are competing, their guards are playing great in pick-and-rolls and doing things they have to do. They're excited about league play,” Calipari said. “You can see the fight that they have, that they're not surrendering. They don't have it in their bones. They're just going to play. It's going to be a tough opponent for us."

Anderson said his team has to execute better offensively to have any chance.

“Your margin for error against Kentucky is so slim that you gotta be on top of your game on both ends of the floor. But from an offensive standpoint, certainly their size presents a problem for us,” the Missouri coach said. “We've got some ideas. There are some things we're going to do, but it's gonna come down to making shots. And that seems like a very simple statement, but it's gonna come down to making perimeter shots if we can get good perimeter shots.

“Maybe trying to extend their bigs out on the floor a little bit so we can get to the basket. But they're so long. They have a great capability to block shots. I just want to go in there and play, play hard, kind of see where we stack up and see where it takes us."

He said both Ole Miss and Texas A&M got “great performances from guards” against UK.

“You're going to have to have somebody have a special game. If anything, they've been challenged two games in a row, probably haven't played their best game and they still won. And I think that says a lot about their team and about their program,” he said. “So you can look it two ways. You can look at it like, well, you know, Ole Miss and A&M pushed them to the wire. Maybe we can too. Or Ole Miss and A&M pushed them to the wire and, uh oh, we're going into Rupp Arena and they're going to be upset and they're going to really be ready to play.

“So I really don't get into all that. I think it's go down and play the game and try to execute better than we have and see if we can play better than we have in the last couple of games."