A Painful Reminder: 2/12/08

So I pulled my Cat's Pause Yearbook off the shelf to check out last year's stats from UK's game at Vandy. (Yeah, I know you can find this stuff on the interwebz, but I like having print copies around, and it's a really great reference...honestly, the best $11.95 a guy can spend).

So imagine my surprise at what I found. No, not the cover photo of Big Pat Patterson with his long-gone afro, nor the back cover shot of Joe B. Hall pimpin' for Kennedy's Book Store. I'm talking about the Nashville game box score from last February.

An absolute nightmare.

Obviously, I had somehow managed to white-wash much of that one from the old memory banks, but the numbers don't lie. We're talking UK hitting only one 3-pointer all night, in 10 attempts (Thank you, Ramel Bradley. You kept the streak alive). We're talking 32.7% overall from the field. We're talking UK only getting off 15 shots in the entire first half.

People, we're even talking a Mark Coury special: in eleven minutes played-- 0 points, 1 rebound, 1 assist. Oh, and let's not forget the 4 personal fouls. Ouch.

It all added up to an embarrassing, nay, humiliating, 93-52 loss. Your halftime score was Vandy 41, Kentucky 11.

Shan Foster went for 20 for the Commodores. A.J. Ogilvy had 19 points, Ross Neltner had 15. Jermaine Beal pitched in another 10. A total of 13 players saw action for Vanderbilt, with 11 of them tallying points. So it was your basic free-for-all. Vandy had a total of 25 points off turnovers. Lay-up line, anyone?

Now, I do seem to remember Patrick picking up a couple of quick fouls in the first half, though he did manage to play 28 minutes and netted10 points. But suffice it to say, this was a horrible mid-February performance for the Cats last season.

Now, I'm really not one for predictions, but I do feel pretty comfortable in saying that Kentucky will not lose by 41 points tomorrow night. How's that for going out on a limb?

So thanks for reading, and please, try to forget all about last year's trip to Nashville and enjoy this year's game... 2/17/09... tip-off is at 9:00pm Eastern on ESPN.