Poythress glad to have family at game

By: LARRY VAUGHT



Freshman Alex Poythress was glad to have his mother, younger sister and grandparents make the trip from Clarksville, Tenn., to watch Friday’s game after he was not with them on Thanksgiving for the first time.

“It was real nice. They came because I couldn’t be with them yesterday. Hopefully they brought some food along so I can eat it. It was my first thanksgiving without my family and that was a little hard,” Poythress said.

His mother, Regina, was the most excitable of the group during the game. He scored 22 points — his fourth straight game with 20 or more points — and had nine rebounds.

“She has not been to a game, so it was good to have her come when we won. She gets excited. She likes to support me and do it in her way. But she always gets excited,” Poythress said.

He was scheduled to have Saturday off but knew after that there would be a “lot of practice” before UK plays at Notre Dame Thursday.

“We got a lot of work to do,” Kentucky coach John Calipari said Friday night. “They're going to have off tomorrow. I tried to see if there's any way, because it was Thanksgiving, if we could practice. If it's a holiday, there's no 20‑hour rule (limitation set by the NCAA). There's no six‑day rule, there's no rules if you're in a holiday. We're in a holiday, why can't we go tomorrow?

“I checked it again and again. I made them read me the rule out of the book. We cannot practice tomorrow. So they'll be off. We'll go Sunday, Monday, Tuesday, then Wednesday scale back for a game on Thursday. Sunday, Monday, Tuesday, we got to get after it, figure out big lineup, how are we playing offensively, what are we doing. We got a lot of questions to answer.”