Article: Kentucky basketball observations for UK v St. John's

- Otega Oweh missed most of the fall practices recovering from a turf toe injury. I know that he has only recently begun to play with the aggression and defensive intensity we wanted to see from the preseason SEC Player of the Year. I wonder how much his productivity was slowed, both from knocking a little bit of rust off and possibly babying his injury until he was hopefully fully recovered.

- St. John's is averaging 88 points per game. I saw a stat that Kentucky is 15-0 under John Calipari when keeping the opponent to 66 or fewer points. I'm not going to hold my breath Saturday to see the 16th time.

- This will be the third time that we have seen Bryce Hopkins play in a game involving Kentucky. I'm counting one time for all the games he played as a Kentucky player, and then in 2023, he played for Providence, who we faced in the NCAA tournament. Hopkins is Pitino's leading scorer this year at 14.0 points per game, same as Otega Oweh.

- Anyone else excited for the possibility we have a Jayden Quaintance sighting Saturday? Any possibility word will leak out today after practice (today after practice was supposed to be when they made their decision on whether he'd play.

- The last time that Kentucky played in the CBS Sports Classic in Atlanta, we defeated North Carolina 87 to 83. I think that we face a much more formidable foe, especially from the coaching standpoint, Saturday, however.

- St. John's will be pumped to play Kentucky. Pitino will pull out all stops. Are they good enough to win? They'll be favored, so that's a dumb question, and have the coaching advantage and athletic advantage. I'm not sure what advantage we have, if any? But I do note that when they played pretty good competition, they weren't nearly as good (sound familiar?)

- Kentucky averages 18.3 assists per game, which is 34th in the country. But in our wins, we are averaging 22.0 assists per game, which is the 12th most in Division I and second most among the power conference teams. If we share the ball, we win. If we don't, we lose, period. That really wasn't the formula against Indiana, however, so maybe that's not the key it appears.

- Kentucky is averaging 8.5 made three-pointers a game on 26.5 attempts, and collectively the team is shooting 32.2 percent. Mark Pope is 20-4 at Kentucky when we hit 10 or more three-pointers in a game, including 4-1 this season. We are only averaging 26.5 attempts per game, which is significantly less than the 35 he claimed he wanted to see Kentucky shoot earlier. I think the rubric has changed, however.