My Kingdom For A Point Guard

South Carolina 78, Kentucky 77....

....and another 20+ turnover game has me sick.

I hate when the Cats lose under any circumstances, but when it comes at home, on a day when the Cats shoot 52%, a day when Meeks and Patterson score 20 & 28 respectively, its just frustrating. Oops, sorry. Meant to capitalize that. What I meant to say is... Frustrating. UK is simply squandering too many possessions to achieve any real consistency.

You can get away with it in stretches-- against weaker teams or in games where the opponent shoots poorly and doesn't make you pay for turning it over. However, it's not like this is a new phenomenon. The "lead guard" position was the biggest question mark coming into the season. Everybody knew Derrick Jasper was gone.

Man, do I miss that guy. Makes me wonder if he was really that good, or what? I liked Derrick's size and his defense more than anything, but his game management was obviously underrated by this humble blogger. I can't imagine him chucking the ball away as much as the current crop of Wildcat "1's". Of course, by most accounts Billy Gillispie did everything he could to try to convince Derrick to stay in Lexington, only the young man was convinced that he wanted to head out to Vegas. I'm not sure what to tell Coach G under the circumstances, "If you liked it then you shoulda put a ring on it?"

When it comes to point guard deficiencies, I suppose I could have posted something like this back in December, and unfortunately, it appears I could be posting the same well into February. UK is just weak there right now. I'm not even gonna bother naming names or beating up guys over it. They need to be coached up, especially the rookie. Suffice it to say they simply must come around, because the poor ball handling and bad decisions seem to infect the rest of the team. Everybody gets sloppy.

One does have to wonder if the answer is elsewhere on the current roster-- whether that involves a position change, a different scheme, or since we're not naming names-- maybe finding more minutes for a certain junior college transfer....or even a freshman from Paintsville. Grasping for straws? Perhaps. But unless Kentucky starts getting better execution from its point guards...well, I don't even want to think about it.