A Few Observations on the Ole Miss Game

Lwcat
WT Administrator

First, give Coach Kennedy and the Ole Miss Rebel a lot of credit.....they played an excellent game and deserved to win. They flat outplayed UK!

Why the Cats lost:

1. Defense was soft and once again the Cats gave up too many open 3 pointers as Ole Miss hit 10 3 pointers. Ole Miss is a team that was averaging 72 points PG, but lit up UK for 85!
2. UK was out toughed on the boards and even though the stats show only a 5 rebound advantage for the Rebels....the difference appeared far greater as Ole Miss had too many put backs and key rebounds.
3. UK was out hustled.
4. Meeks was essentially taken out of the game by super defense from the Rebels. Jodie ended up with 21, but he hit two 3's in the last minute that were really meaningless as the game was over.
5. In the last 10-12 minutes the Cats made a number of poor decisions with some key TO's and bad shots.
6. Liggins, a 18.2% 3 point shooter shoots 7 3's hitting 1. overall, Liggins takes 16 shots from the floor....far too many.....and many were bad shots.
7. Aside from Meeks, UK has no other true outside scoring threat. To date: Harris is shooting 20% from 3 point range on 3-15....Miller is 5-26 for 19.2%.....Porter is 11-41 for 26.8% and Liggins is 6-33 for 18.2%. Folks, these are simply horrible outside shooting stats!
8. Patterson gets 12 shots and Liggins takes 16 shots......you don't have to be a rocket scientist to understand that the wrong player is taking too many shots and the right player isn't getting enough shots.
9. We all wondered what would happen when Meeks was held in check by a strong defense or had an off shooting night.....well, we found out.....currently, no UK players are stepping up offensively.

When you get out hustled, out rebounded, out toughed, shoot poorly from the field, have too many shots taken by the wrong players, play poor defense on the parameter, executed poorly on offense and simply get outplayed in every facet of the game.....guess what.....you lose.

This loss hurts because UK is a more talented and better team than Ole Miss who had a 10-9 record. This was a game UK needed to win, but, unfortunately, the Cats played poorly and lost a very winnable game.