Tonight illustrated how crazy college basketball can be from game to game. We looked as hapless as we could be a few days ago being blown out in Gainesville. Tonight we were right back to being the same world beaters who wrecked UAT last week. USCe is a very tough team with a win @UT and blew out UK at their place. Prior to tonight, the most points they had given up on the season was 77 and had given up less than 70 in all but 1 other game. Incredibly impressive for us to put up 101 on them, much less to win it by 40. Incredible job by our guys not to let the shellacking in Gainesville impact their confidence.
Jaylin struggled as much as anyone this past weekend but bounced back with one of his best games of the year. 23 points on 5/7 shooting from deep. I texted
@MattAU05 after he hit his first 3 of the game and said we needed to get him twice as many attempts. He was averaging 2.5 attempts/game on the year so 7 tonight was a huge increase. Would love to see us get him that many looks in every tough game going forward.
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Not to be outdone, Johni had a career game from deep tonight going 4/5. His confidence on his 3 pt shot has increased so much over the course of the season. From hesitant to take open looks to knocking down step-backs tonight. Amazing to see him adding this element to his game as the season progresses.
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Really proud of Bruce and the rest of the coaches for getting the guys past the blowout and onto this game. A lesser coaching staff and team could have easily had its confidence damaged by a terrible showing like that. Our guys have the short memory necessary to move on to the next test and play their best game of the year. A 40 point win over the #11 ranked team in the country is as much of a statement win as we could hope to make. To put triple digits on a solid defense makes it even more impressive. UK's defense has been pretty terrible this year so play like this again this weekend and we should be able to put up another big point total. The regular season title is still very much within reach with us favored in all but one of our remaining games. Tonight was a great start to the stretch run.