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| Courtesy of ukrecruiting.bloginky.com |
Tonight is the night everybody has been waiting for. The first chance to see the sensational six freshmen in action. Well fabulous five since Andrew Harrison won't be suiting up due to a knee injury. I'm assuming this is nothing serious and if it wasn't an exhibition that he would be suiting up and ready to go.
The Vitals
Day: Friday
Date: Nov. 1, 2013
Location: Lexington, Ky.
Time: 7:00 p.m. ET
TV: FS South/UK IMG
Radio: UK IMG
Transylvania Pioneers (0-0, 0-0)
Transylvania finished the year 20-8 overall and 14-4 in the Heartland Conference, which was good enough for second in the league. They return six players from last years team with two starters returning. Like Kentucky this is a very young team with 13 freshmen on the team.
Head Coach Brian Lane is in his 12th season as coach of the Pioneers and sports a 211-91 record while leading Transylvania to the NCAA DIII tournament five times. Won Coach of the Year for the Heartland Conference four times since taking over.
Parker Stansberry is their leading returning scorer at 8.9 PPG and Tate Cox follow him with 7.8 PPG. Parker is the returning leader in rebounds at 3.4 RPG followed by Taylor Botkin at 3.0 RPG. Cox is the returning leader with 23 assists. While Stansberry also is the returning leader in blocks with 14 and Botkin in steals with 22.
Transylvania shot 48.2% from the floor, 38.3% from beyond the arc and 70.2% from the line while scoring 70.5 PPG. Their opponents shot 44.1% from the floor, 37% from beyond the arc and 69.1% from the line while scoring 61.6 PPG.
Kentucky Wildcats (0-0, 0-0)
Kentucky is coming off a rough season after winning the National Title two years ago. They finished the season 21-12 overall and 12-6 in the SEC finishing second in the conference. For most schools this would be a successful season but considering Kentucky failed to make the NCAA Tournament and lost to Robert Morris in the first round of the NIT makes it a terrible season for Big Blue Nation.
The Wildcats are lead by Head Coach John Calipari who is entering his fifth season at Kentucky is 123-26 while at UK and 526-164 overall. Led UK to the Final Four in his third year UK while winning a National Championship the following year.
UK returns seven players this year with Alex Poythress and Willie Cauley-Stein as the only players returning who started a significant amount of games. Like Transylvania there are a lot of freshmen on this team with nine on this Kentucky squad.
Poythress and Cauley-Stein are the leading returning scorers with 11.2 PPG and 8.3 PPG respectively. They are also the leading rebounders with Cauley-Stein at 6.2 RPG and Poythress at 6.0 RPG. Jarrod Polson is the leading assist man with 35. Cauley-Stein is also the returning leader in both blocks and steals with 60 and 24 respectively.
Kentucky shot 47.5% from the floor, 34.6% from beyond the arc and 64.2% from the line while scoring 72.6 PPG. Their opponents shot 39.2% from the floor, 32.4% from beyond the arc and 71.9% from the line while scoring 64.5 PPG.
Edge: Kentucky
Kentucky clearly has the edge here. They are bigger, faster and stronger than Transylvania. Transylvania will put up a fight because they are a good team who won't be afraid of the moment but by the end of the game the talent differential will just be too much for Transylvania.
What I'm Looking For
- Who will run PG for Kentucky and how will the offense look with somebody else running it. I'm expecting Jarrod Polson to be the starting point guard since he is the more experienced player between him and Hawkins. I want to see the offense run smoothly and have a good flow to it.
- Can James Young repeat his performance in the scrimmage? This is probably what I'm most excited to see. Young had an amazing scrimmage going for 27 points and while I don't expect him to score 20+, I want to see if that playmaking ability is there and that explosiveness we saw from him in the scrimmage.
- What will the rotation be, especially for the bigs. Who will Calipari bring off the bench first? Is Dakari or Lee going to be the guy or Willis who has been making a noise for himself in practice and might be the first guy off the bench for the Wildcats this season.
- Is Randle the real deal? The answer is yes but I'm still excited to see just how dominant he can be and in a game like this I expect him to just absolutely dominant from start to finish.
My Prediction
Kentucky will win this game. It will be fairly close earlier but they will pull away for a sizable lead. UK 86-49
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