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  • Kentucky hasn't hit their peak yet

    By: LARRY VAUGHT

    NASHVILLE — Former Kentucky player John Pelphrey has watched UK play in person three times this season when the No. 1 Wildcats beat Florida.

    Pelphrey knows how hard it is to keep winning. Last year Florida won 30 straight games and did not lose a game for 125 days.

    Now UK is 32-0 after Friday’s win over Florida and Pelphrey thinks the best of UK may not yet have been seen.

    “One thing I admired about our team last year was that we played as good as we could have played,” said the Florida assistant coach. “The scary thing for Kentucky is that they haven’t hit their peak yet. There is another level for those guys. It’s not easy to hit all those challenges, and they did. You get an extremely talented basketball team that is really well coached and if you don’t play great, you have no chance.”

    Pelphrey says coach John Calipari’s history at UK indicates the team will get better. He noted the 2011 team — that lost to Arkansas when Pelphrey was head coach there — went on to make the Final Four behind a surge led by Brandon Knight. He noted how UK lost to Florida three times last year and then made the national title game.

    “Last year they got hot and played their best (in the NCAA Tournament). I imagine this year’s team wll do the same,” Pelphrey said.

    Pelphrey wouldn’t go into specifics on how UK could improve — “assistant coaches shouldn’t be talking,” he said — before talking about the “tremerndous respect and admiration” everyone had for what UK is doing.

    Florida did not lose a SEC game last year and then beat UK in the final to win the SEC Tournament. However, Pelphrey says not losing did not help the Gators going into NCAA play.

    “I think it was more of a burden. I think it was a relief when we got that (over with and got into NCAA play),” Pelphrey said. “One thing I respected from our team last year was that they kept going back to work. They had to put in a certain level of work to earn victory or have a chance to win.”

    Pelphrey feels UK’s 31-0 regular-season record should be celebrate no matter what happens in the next few weeks.

    “I don’t want to get involved in ranking teams. That is argumentative and you can’t argue championships,” Pelphrey said. “I think I have a tremendous amount of respect for regular season. They did it inthe non-conference and in league. To me, that carried a lot more weight with me as a coach and player than the NCAA Tournament would.

    “Lot of people out there argue with that, and that’s fine. Obviously March Madness gets everybody excited and is unique and is all about matchups. The wrong couple of calls here and there and wrong guy tweaks an ankle ... everything changes so much. But when you do something from the start of the season to the end, that is persistence, that is resilience, that is handling success.

    “Success can make you think you are better than you are and not want to go back and practice. When complacency sets in, that’s a deadly evil. That’s a bad sin. What they have done this regular season, to me, is awesome.”
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    Harlow

    Re: Oakland v UK hall of fame

    See ya next guys with a new coach

    Harlow 03-22-2024, 08:36 AM Go to last post