Deja Vu, Anyone?

I think we may be on the verge of a new nickname for this year's basketball team. Why don't replace "Cal's Cats" with "Cardiac Cats"? With yesterday's narrow win over Auburn, Kentucky extended its unbeaten streak to 18 games and, in the process, fueled recent criticism claiming this young squad cannot put lesser teams away.

As I said yesterday, Auburn would be a tough win if they started making threes. First half, the Tigers made only a couple threes. Second half, Auburn's best shooters got hot and ended the game having made 9 field goals from outside the arc.

It really looked like Kentucky was finally going to pull away from a team and get their first 20 or 30 point victory in the conference, with a stellar 5-minute stretch at the end of the first half and a 13 point advantage at the break. Unfortunately, John Wall played uncharacteristically sloppy in the second half, trying to force too many fast breaks and turning the ball over too often. Nevertheless, his free throws down the stretch proved to be the difference. I'll say this, I don't think there's another player in the country I'd rather have at the charity stripe with the game on the line than John Wall. He proved it against Stanford early in the year, he made clutch free throws against UConn at MSG, and he continually looks cool as ice at the stripe in the closing minutes.

So much for Darius Miller's breakout game. Although he did have a fantastic defense sequence in which he blocked two shots and started a fast break, he was the only starter not to register in double figures and was altogether lackluster.

Another long stretch of off days for the Cats, with the next game coming this Saturday against Arkansas. Should be very cool to welcome back John Pelphrey into the confines of Rupp Arena, although I'm sure his Razorback club won't find them all that friendly.