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LEXINGTON — After watching his team take apart Missouri 86-37 Tuesday night, Kentucky coach John Calipari had a simple explanation for what No. 1 UK did to the Tigers.
“They got what UCLA and Kansas got. That's what they got. That effort,” said Calipari.
That was not the same effort Mississippi and Texas A&M got in UK’s first two Southeastern Conference games when both teams had a chance to beat UK — and probably should have beat the Cats.
Calipari didn’t want anyone to think that UK won big because Missouri (7-9) is that bad.
“But understand, they had Illinois beat, they lost by two. They had Oklahoma State, they lost in overtime. They had them beat. They beat LSU. And they had Auburn down 10 and they ended up losing by a couple,” Calipari said. “So you can say what you want, they played a buzz saw today.”
They did and maybe it was a small lie that Calipari told his team that helped produce the effort that had been missing from a team that dominated games in November and December but not in SEC play until Tuesday.
“What I said before the game is, if they give a great effort, I'm going to give them off tomorrow. Kind of like what we did for Christmas. You're going to have three, four days off. And they went nuts,” Calipari said. “Now I took that back and I said, we are practicing tomorrow — but I did say that prior to the game.”
Whatever it was, something Calipari said worked.
The Cats shot 48.2 percent (27 of 56) from the field, 44.4 percent (8 of 18) from 3-point range and 80 percent (24 of 30) at the foul line. Seven players had at least one assist. No one took more than eight shots — and Aaron Harrison went 5-for-8 overall and 5-for-7 from 3-point range. Eleven players scored and had a rebound. No one played more than 23 minutes.
Calipari went back to a true two-platoon system by inserting sophomore Dominique Hawkins into the starting lineup, a move he settled on Sunday even though he joked he often didn’t tell the media what he planned to do.
Hawkins had six points, three assists, two steals and one assist in 20 minutes. More importantly, he provided constant energy — something UK had been lacking.
“We felt like the past two games we didn’t come out with high energy. This game we were focused on how to bring out great energy, be able to pressure the ball, be able to take away 3’s that the team’s making on us,” Hawkins said. “Once we realized that we got teams down by 20, we feel like we gotta keep on putting the pressure on them and try to beat them by as much as we can. So we don’t ever try to give up. We just keep on continuing and bringing it.”
Kentucky certainly kept bringing it against Missouri and used a 20-2 run to break the game open in the first half. Kentucky outscored Missouri 44-18 in the first half and 42-19 the second half.
Freshman Karl-Anthony Towns had a double-double — 12 points and 10 rebounds. He also had five blocks, one steal and one assist in 21 minutes. He thought UK did what it was supposed to do against opponents to dominate games.
“I think we did a great job mostly of just playing defense. Playing Kentucky basketball and doing what our staples are, holding people to way below average in points per game, and holding their best players down to minimum points. We did a great job of that tonight and that’s why you saw the scoreboard what it was,” Towns said.
Kentucky limited Missouri to 27.1 percent shooting from the field, including 1-for-18 from 3-point range. That was the point of emphasis to take away the 3-point shot and UK did.
Towns said the game was more than a return to normalcy for UK.
“It feels like a step ahead actually, knowing you could come back to do what you did before that was so successful right away. It’s a great feeling knowing that we did that today,” Towns said. “I think we shot well offensively also, and we did a great job of getting layups. Now we’re hitting 3’s, so it’s going really well right now.”
It certainly did Tuesday.
“It was a good feeling. We wanted to win big tonight, and we were focused on it. I had a good feeling about this game that we were going to come out and play well,” Aaron Harrison, who had a game-high 16 points, said.
Calipari said the Cats were again just one big happy family looking to regain their swag after being scrutinized nationally following last week’s two close wins.
“The greatest thing is we have got great kids. They don't play great every night out, but they want to do well, they want to listen, they want to be coached,” Calipari said. “They celebrated each other today. You have to admit, people talked about our defense and our bench. Well, what happened to our bench in the last few games? Our bench went away. So the platoon got us back to being into each other and celebrating each other.”
And in a 49-point win, there was more than enough celebrating to go around.
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