Kentucky put in a brilliant effort on the boards tonight, with unofficial stats showing UK had a 42-22 rebounding advantage over Auburn. That's huge. It's even more important when you still turn it over 20+ times at home (more on that later.) Big Pat pulled down 18 off the glass by himself, which is listed as a career high.
We'll go ahead and credit the training staff here for deciding to only tape the one injured finger on Patrick's hand instead of taping it together with an adjacent figure. Hmm. Of course, it's basketball, not football-- and last time I checked it really helps to have all those digits operating independently when you handle it as much as Patrick does. He had a tremendous night scoring the ball again-- this despite the fact that Auburn seemed intent on fouling him early, rather than giving up easy buckets, so he hurt them from the charity stripe.
Perry Stevenson turned in a superb game statistically as well, notching a double-double and doing all the things on both ends of the court that keep him in the lineup and keep me optimistic about this team's ceiling. After all, Jodie is going to get his on most nights (a pedestrian 31 this evening. Yawn.)
But Michael Porter tonight.... Yikes! Not good. That strip out top where he got clowned by an Auburn defender was just plain ugly, but there was really a bevy of bad passes and a disturbing tendency to pass up wide open 15-footers. I'm sorry, but you have to occasionally take those just to keep a defense honest. Even a poor shooter is going to accidentally make a few, and from that distance there's no reason that Mike can't convert a respectable percentage. His confidence is just not there.
Unfortunately, I'm beginning to think that Porter is like that institutional salmonella-tainted peanut butter that is being recalled across the country and has everyone scared to death. They say that the majority of the product is actually perfectly safe and so you could probably make yourself a nice peanut butter & jelly sandwich with it-- which would be representative of Porter's normal contribution. But some games you get the bad salmonella batch, and the performance makes you violently ill. (Or at least makes you want to throw up as you watch another stupid entry pass into the post sail out of reach).
The worst thing about this scenario is that sure, you can beat a lot of teams out there with a peanut butter & jelly sandwich at point/"lead" guard, but there will be times when the opponent has a 16 oz. ribeye at that position, and then what are you going to do?
Well, I tell you what I'm going to do: stay positive, enjoy another conference win (on a night when Florida got beat), and hope this team keeps growing and developing, from starting point guard all the way down to the last guy on the bench. So pass the peanut butter, I've made myself hungry. Go Cats.
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