J.D. Hall 
Kentucky Basketball is ready to begin their season.
The exhibition season for the Kentucky Wildcats ended Tuesday night with a 98-
67 win over Minnesota State Mankato at Rupp Arena. It was more of what you expect to
see against a Division II opponent, even if they were the defending National Champion.
The Cats did get off to a bit of a sluggish start, shooting 2-12 from 3 to start the game
(they finished 11-25). The star of that barrage was Jaxson Robinson, who went a
blistering 8-12 from 3 for 24 points. He was one of 4 cats in double figures in the game,
Otega Oweh with 15, Andrew Carr with 14 And finally, Brandon Garrison with 12.
Garrison also had the play of the game with a monstrous poster dunk in the second half
that brought the arena, and the bench, to their feet.
Kentucky also had another huge night with assists with 28 on 37 made baskets. They
were led in that category by Kerr Kriisa and Oweh with 6 each, followed close behind by
Lamont Butler with 5. They also had another great night by committing only 8 turnovers.
It wasn’t all great, however. Rebounding was closer than it should’ve been with
Kentucky only holding a 2 rebound advantage, 39-37. The big scare was with Drexel
Grad transfer, Amari Williams. All of BBN held their collective breath when the big man
left the game early with an apparent leg injury. Coach Pope did address this after the
game saying, “I think he’s fine, the X-rays came back solid, but we’ll get some more
imaging tomorrow. We’re hopeful he’ll be back soon.” The BBN can now breathe a sigh
of relief.
They needed to be exposed to see where they were at before the start of the season,
which gets started Monday against Wright State. Wright State finished last season 18-
14 and finished 13-7 in the Horizon League, good enough for 3 rd place. They return 6
players off that team led by Brandon Noel who averaged 14.5 pts and 8 rebounds last
season and Alex Huibregtse who averaged 12.3 points, 3.8 rebounds and 3.3 assists. It
should be another good, early season test for the newly formed Cats before they take
on Duke on November 12 in The Champion’s Classic.
Coach Pope seemed to settle on a top 8 for his rotation, with Chandler, Noah, Almonor
and Perry rounding out the 4 that will get playing time based on matchups, foul trouble
and injury concerns. They were also named the deepest team in the nation by stats
guru Evan Miyakawa. While the Cats didn’t have anyone in his top 100 rankings, all the
players were ranked between 120 and 240 in the country. This is a problem, but it’s also
what should be considered a good problem to have. Platoon holds a love/hate place in
fan’s hearts due to what happened with the 2014-2015 team that employed that
strategy. While I don’t think that Pope will use a “platoon” system, having this many
good players on the roster allows for competitive practices and cover in case of injury or
foul problems. We saw the importance of this when Williams went down and Garrison
got his shot the be the main big on the floor. Garrison made the most of it, having a
terrific game and I have no doubts when the others are called on, we will see the same
thing.
Everything we saw in the 2 exhibition games, good and bad, can be thrown out the
window now. The season starts, for real, Monday night and the lights and the pressure
will be at a different level. That shouldn’t matter to this team, though. There are 7 super
seniors on this team and 9 total players that have played a lot of college basketball. This
is an old team, anyway you look at it, so they should be able to handle the start of a new
season, even if it is on the greatest and brightest stage in college basketball.
The season tips off Monday November 4 at 7:00pm EST at Rupp Arena and on ESPNU.
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