Nothing is easy about being #1 and winning on the road. Even trash teams like UGA can find a way to battle tooth and nail to try and salvage their season with a signature win. We obviously played terribly in the second half today on offense. Aside from the big run by UGA to erase our lead, our D held up well enough to put us in position to still get the W. That's been the case in all of our ugly wins this year. Without our elite defense, we likely have 2-3 more losses right now.
Anyone who wondered how important Zep is to this team look no further than this one. This is the first time all year that I've seen our guards look tired at the end of a game and a big part of that was not having Zep's quality 20+ minutes. Great job by Preston being ready to step up and play meaningful minutes for the first time today, but the drop off from Zep to him is obviously pretty significant. Great teams find ways to win ugly games and our guys did that once again today. When you win this many tough close games, it's not luck. It's toughness and grit. That's what it takes to win a conference title and make a deep run in March. This certainly wasn't one of our best wins of the year, but it is one of the most important as it was one of the only potential real resume damaging losses on our schedule.
Wendell had his best 1st half of the season today. Struggled to score in the 2nd, but with the game hanging in the balance with 10 seconds to go, he took it coast to coast to get the W for us. That was a championship play by Wen. If we go on to win the SEC regular season and get a 1 seed, that will be one of the plays of the season, imo. A bad loss to UGA could have kept us off the 1 line on selection Sunday. He had the assist of the year on the dunk of the year by Devan in the first half which will be a part of every season-long highlight reel.
KD was huge once again today. No question he wanted this W badly against his former team. When UGA made their big run to erase our lead in the 2nd, KD shut the run down with a 4 point run of his own which set the stage for the 1 possession rock fight the rest of the way. If KD doesn't stop their momentum there, they could have opened up a lead which would have made getting out of there with a W very tough given how much we were struggling to score. Pretty impressive he managed to score 20 despite being robbed several more trips to the line today when he got fouled on drives.
Walker was a huge factor today despite being held under his recent average scoring. When he was off the court, UGA was able to score at the rim with way too much ease. Once he came back in after their run early in the second, they became much more hesitant to attack the basket. If the refs don't call an awful foul on him late on one of the cleanest blocks you'll ever see, this probably doesn't come down to the wire. This play on an inbounds was one of the prettiest moves you'll ever see by a 7'1 guy.
Aside from avoiding a terrible loss, the biggest aspect about the W today is who we face in 3 days. At Arkansas is one of the toughest remaining games on the schedule so a loss today would have had us potentially playing with a 1 game lead in Fayettenam. Even if we get the W there, we'd have UK right on our heels in the regular season title race the rest of the way. The only time I'd like to see bama win a game is when it helps us win a championship. I don't see many chances for Ls on UK's remaining schedule so if they dropped the game in Tuscaloosa tonight, it would be a big boost to our chances of winning a solo regular season crown. Hopefully NIT's guys can shoot the lights out in the hanger like they did against us earlier this week and pull off the upset.
Anyone who wondered how important Zep is to this team look no further than this one. This is the first time all year that I've seen our guards look tired at the end of a game and a big part of that was not having Zep's quality 20+ minutes. Great job by Preston being ready to step up and play meaningful minutes for the first time today, but the drop off from Zep to him is obviously pretty significant. Great teams find ways to win ugly games and our guys did that once again today. When you win this many tough close games, it's not luck. It's toughness and grit. That's what it takes to win a conference title and make a deep run in March. This certainly wasn't one of our best wins of the year, but it is one of the most important as it was one of the only potential real resume damaging losses on our schedule.
Wendell had his best 1st half of the season today. Struggled to score in the 2nd, but with the game hanging in the balance with 10 seconds to go, he took it coast to coast to get the W for us. That was a championship play by Wen. If we go on to win the SEC regular season and get a 1 seed, that will be one of the plays of the season, imo. A bad loss to UGA could have kept us off the 1 line on selection Sunday. He had the assist of the year on the dunk of the year by Devan in the first half which will be a part of every season-long highlight reel.
KD was huge once again today. No question he wanted this W badly against his former team. When UGA made their big run to erase our lead in the 2nd, KD shut the run down with a 4 point run of his own which set the stage for the 1 possession rock fight the rest of the way. If KD doesn't stop their momentum there, they could have opened up a lead which would have made getting out of there with a W very tough given how much we were struggling to score. Pretty impressive he managed to score 20 despite being robbed several more trips to the line today when he got fouled on drives.
Walker was a huge factor today despite being held under his recent average scoring. When he was off the court, UGA was able to score at the rim with way too much ease. Once he came back in after their run early in the second, they became much more hesitant to attack the basket. If the refs don't call an awful foul on him late on one of the cleanest blocks you'll ever see, this probably doesn't come down to the wire. This play on an inbounds was one of the prettiest moves you'll ever see by a 7'1 guy.
Aside from avoiding a terrible loss, the biggest aspect about the W today is who we face in 3 days. At Arkansas is one of the toughest remaining games on the schedule so a loss today would have had us potentially playing with a 1 game lead in Fayettenam. Even if we get the W there, we'd have UK right on our heels in the regular season title race the rest of the way. The only time I'd like to see bama win a game is when it helps us win a championship. I don't see many chances for Ls on UK's remaining schedule so if they dropped the game in Tuscaloosa tonight, it would be a big boost to our chances of winning a solo regular season crown. Hopefully NIT's guys can shoot the lights out in the hanger like they did against us earlier this week and pull off the upset.
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