LEXINGTON, Ky. (WDRB) – It kind of looks easy, when Rob Dillingham steps onto the court (off the bench) and simply can’t be guarded, and Antonio Reeves is making a dazzling variety of shots and scoring 27 points without you really noticing.
But it’s not always easy for Kentucky, not easy for Kentucky coach John Calipari. There are difficult decisions to be made. D.J. Wagner has a rough start to the second half, and you could tell Calipari didn’t want to take him out. He wanted to let him work through it a bit.
But an 18-point halftime lead shrank to six, and finally Cal slammed his hands together to get a timeout, Dillingham and Reed Sheppard having already sat down at the scorer’s table, and Kentucky went on to build back its lead and cruise to a 90-77 victory.
It was Calipari’s 400th on court win at Kentucky. He said an opposing player congratulated him after the game.
“I didn’t know,” Calipari said. “One of their players said something. Our guys have no idea. They just want to know what we’re going to eat.”
Apparently, they were still hungry after eating Mississippi State’s lunch.
Personnel is not a question for this team. Even defense is not a huge concern. It will come. Some advanced rotations and concepts are often among the last things to come for young teams. The only question is coaching – not because Calipari is questionable, but because he’s going to have to adjust game to game to who has the hot hand and who needs to sit and whether to go with bigs or whether to go with Dillingham, Sheppard and Reeves together.
You know this from going to the grocery store or the car lot. The more choices you have, the harder it is. And Calipari has a ton of choices.
“Some of these players, you know how you help them? You put them on the bench,” Calipari said. “Other times, you’ve just got to hug them. You give them books for positive thinking and different things to get them to think different. You’re trying to teach them habits because the dominant habits are not really good when you’re 19 and 20. And you’re trying to create new ones. Every day is a battle, push and pull.”
KenPom’s analytics ranked Mississippi State No. 8 in the nation in defensive efficiency. You have fill out forms to be allowed to score more than 70 against this team. The numbers said this game would be fairly close, a six-point or so Kentucky win.
Kentucky scored 90. It won by 13. Could have scored more. Could have won by more. MSU used a late 6-0 run to make it more respectable.
The one thing analytics can’t quantify is something I’ll just call “game.” Dillingham has it. Sheppard has it.
And Reeves? The guy can score.
With or without big man Zvonimir Ivisic, now the recipient of a “Free Big Z” billboard outside NCAA headquarters in Indianapolis thanks to an enterprising bunch of Big Blue Backers, Kentucky has enough talent, enough firepower, and enough upside to be a special group.
Kentucky averages better than 90 points a game. The whole “Will Cal turn them loose” line of questioning before the season? Answered. They’ve been turned loose.
And I know his counter to the question of any player’s minutes on the court: Who are you going to sit? He has that discussion with his team, and described one such line of questioning the other day.
But in reality, that’s a question for him. And he’s handling it now, and he’ll handle it later, and it’ll be his call.
Here's an indicator as to how his call will go. When the final stats were tabulated from Wednesday’s game, Sheppard had a team-high 30 minutes, along with Antonio Reeves. Dillingham had 27, and would’ve had more had he not had to leave the game with blood on his uniform. (Tre Mitchell, himself proving to be an indispensable man in the frontcourt, played 28 minutes.)
But the longer this season goes, the more Dillingham emerges as one of the toughest players to guard in college basketball. And the more Sheppard proves himself to be one of the most talented and intuitive freshmen in the game, the more that pair looks like one that can stand with any backcourt in the nation – especially when Antonio Reeves is out there at the same time.
“But,” Calipari said. “Next game maybe D.J. is playing well and one of those others has to sit.”
There’s plenty of time to work it out. And Calipari has the pieces, and Kentucky is a really fun set.
On Wednesday, Kentucky looked a bit better defensively, stayed more solid in its gaps, didn’t give up quite so many blow-bys. It helped that the Bulldogs aren’t a big three-point team, making just 6 of 10.
Kentucky, meanwhile, shot 55.6 percent, dished out 20 assists and made 7 of 23 threes. And Mississippi State couldn’t stop them.
“They have so many facilitators and playmakers,” Mississippi State coach Chris Jans said. “They have two guys who come off the bench who could start at a lot of places. . . . They like each other and spread the ball and shoot it so well from three, then have those lob threats behind the defense. They put a lot of pressure on you defensively.”
Next up for Kentucky, a home test against Georgia on Saturday afternoon.
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