Kentucky Gets Its First Dose of Revenge

After two full days of awesome basketball action at the SEC tournament in CATlanta I'm going to give the quick note version of Kentucky's 75-66 victory of the Ole Miss Rebels in the quarterfinals.

• The Cats never trailed in the contest and had double digit leads in both halves.  Kentucky struggled with foul trouble in the first half with Miller, Liggins, and Jones each with two fouls.  In the second half the team built a 12 point lead before the Rebels slowed the tempo of the game down with a zone defense.  We know this team can never do anything the easy way.
• Despite two fouls in the first five minutes of the game, Darius Miller had another strong game with 15 points and 7 rebounds.  His confidence seems to be the highest in his career and he continues to be a much more consistent scorer for this team.
• Brandon Knight had a horrible shooting night for most of the game, but hit two huge jumpers with the Cats desperate for a basket and hanging on for dear life in the second half
• Doron Lamb led the team with 19 points on 10-14 shooting.  Good to see as he has had his struggles shooting the basketball at times on the road this season.
• Terrence Jones was just plain awful for most of the game.  He continues to force terrible shots and couldn't guard me.  If he is a lottery pick in the NBA draft, then I'm a Tennessee fan.  He just can't seem to figure out that he can have an impact on the game without scoring.
• Evidently some sort of altercation took place between the Cats and Rebels after the game was over on the way back to the locker rooms.  DeAndre Liggins was running his mouth, a real shocker, and things almost got physical.  The concourse of the Georgia Dome was rambant with rumors of Liggins being suspended for tomorrow's game, but as of now that has not been reported.

Kentucky will have another chance at revenge as they take on the Alabama Crimson Tide in the first semifinal tomorrow afternoon.  Alabama completed an amazing comeback from 14 points down in the second half to beat Georgia in route to tomorrow's match up.  The Tide are a big, physical bunch and the Cats will need to be able to compete physically if they want to have a chance to advance to the finals.  Hopefully they can shoot the ball better from the three point line to take pressure off the inside game.