It's Ugly with a capital U. Even the lay=ups won't drop. And that steal at the end of the half only to have a dunk swatted away...jeez this is going to be a long game.
I think sometimes we forget that alot of basketball is simply does the ball go down for you and confidence. Clearly LSU didn't have the horses to match up. It also doesn't help if you can't buy a basket and Kentucky is prepared for your zone and hits a ton of 3s in the first half. Watching it online, I think this was the story of UK was ready for the zone, and got hot in the first half. Once a young UK team with superior talent gets ahead, their confidence is going and they just piled it on. On the flipside, what you'd like to see was toughness from LSU, but also discipline. That's what I think truthfully lacks right now. Sure, it's hard to blame the Tigers when Eddie Ludwig has to guard a McD AA, or when Stringer has a match up against a 6'5" Brandon Knight. But, it was clear we had deer in the headlights look about us. About the only kids that I thought showed aggression were Dotson, Green (but even then, a few two many 3s from Green and missed shots down low) and maybe Warren. I think in the early part of the season, as Trent said, we had "fools gold" because folks like Stringer and Turner were hitting 3s and building leads on long balls. Those have dried up, and frankly, we lose the battle on rebounds and not doing the little things. Sloppy turnovers, letting rebounds get taken away, mix-ups on defense. I think it's a little hard to blame the guys, when you're down almost 30 at half, the life is sort of beat out of you, but you'd like to see more compete and more focus. In the second half, frankly outside of the last bit, LSU looked better, but you could tell Trent was frustrated. The key was just play your game, run your stuff, focus, take good shots, regardless of score. There were a lot of lapses from Stringer, Bass, White, Green and others. Confidence is a mysterious thing in hoops. You have to have it, and boy we better find it. If we can't hit 35% from 3 land, with this team, it's going to be hard to stay in games with good teams. I still think (like the announcers on several occasions) that Trent knows what he's doing in building a program. Today was just another learning experience for this young team--that they've got to be tougher, mentally and physically, and they've got to learn to play with focus all of the time, even in a 40 point loss. And, don't worry, Kentucky is going to beat a lot of folks this season.
It seemed like we tried to run with them in the early stages certainly jacking up shots to early in the time clock when maybe the game plan should have been to work the clock as much as possible. We still would have lost but maybe we play them a little closer.
I expected this; maybe not the extent of the blowout, but Arkansas & Auburn are not Kentucky. I thought Green showed some grit and I was impressed by that.
