Not just after a foul. but more during the game. Still a need for more talking, but more confidence was shown by Liggins and the team seemed to respond. Both Liggins and Harrellson made major contributions. Now if we would use the bench more it would help. It was distressing to hear the “announcers” say KY wasn’t very deep. Our conditioning held up really well, but we will need more help as the season goes along.

Has anyone heard about the results of Pilgrim’s request to play this year? I am assuming it was denied, but haven’t heard anything.

These trump the opening L to VMI in my book.

Both K-St and WVU are solid (BCS) opponents. UK beat both despite not playing our best game.

Harrelson provided just what we needed from him again – solid screens, powerful posting up, rebounds, and most importantly for this game – MADE LAYUPS. Nice work from the free-throw line too. Not a marquis player like Meeks or Patterson, but you need this kind of play to succeed. Still, he needs to actually block out when rebounding, not just rely on his size and position. Great work, and glad to see he is living up to the hype of his recruitment. I think the best lineup is Jorts/Patterson/Meeks/Liggins + either Miller or Razor, whoever is playing better that day. This is mainly because Jorts can set some screens to keep Patterson from being double teamed as easily.

Speaking of layups, what was up with our layups in the first half? Hopefully they are going to have to replace the hoops at the Craft Center from all the dunking practice on them this week.

I think we finally got to see some of the “toughness” that Billy G. has been talking about all season but we haven’t seen. We really didn’t let WVU get to us, despite poor shooting in the first half and a big deficit. Also, we were back on the floor 17.5 hours after the previous game, and worn out, but we played on! This is great because it really simulates the kind of post-season tournament environment we are going to be in. Even though the games aren’t quite this close together, they are pretty close still compared to the regular season. Credit goes to the much-maligned game-day practices.

Great coaching by Billy G. in both games. Especially K-St. I loved the weave play that set up the back door. People love to jump on coach when things don’t go well, but he definitely out-coached his competition yesterday, and those were both well-coached teams.

Awesome team defense by UK against WVU. We really shut them down. We are finally getting the pressure defense, and that was the difference in the game for us. With our size, we should really cause some problems for teams if we can continue to improve on defense. Can you remember any “gimme” shots that either K-State or WVU got because of a ridiculous defensive breakdown? I can’t. But I can remember some earlier in the year. We are definitely improving.

If we could get down to say 12 turnovers per game, we would be a top 10 team, IMHO. These turnovers are keeping teams in the game that we would otherwise be punishing.

I can’t believe, with Huggins sitting there watching the K-St. game, that WVU didn’t press us more. They must have been totally unprepared to press.

Meeks didn’t shoot well, but he did show a lot of fortitude. My favorite play of his was the defensive read of the double screen near the end of the game, resulting in a steal. He saw exactly what was going to happen, didn’t show his hand, but got in position for the steal. Then he used his awesome speed for a steal and an easy 2 on the other end. I also liked that he didn’t take too many bad shots. Teams are going to start keying on Meeks with the kind of dominant games he has like K-State, and you could see some of that against WVU. Still had some turnovers, but otherwise a good game.

Patterson played very well I thought. He did a much better job getting position and muscling around underneath like we haven’t seen since last year. He had his man posted so many times, ready to score. We still need to do a better job of getting him the ball, but we’ll get there. Excellent positioning and rebounding on the defensive end as well. He’s still our star!

Miller’s defense improved. I don’t have the stats, but it seemed to me he reduced his fouls per minute. That’s definitely good. Overall, not as good a game as he has had offensively. But he’s a freshman and this is tough competition, so I’m not down on him. Like Tru says, great job on their star shooter.

The Razor seemed a little lost. He has had some solid games for us though, so he’s entitled to an off game.

Stevenson didn’t have a good day. He needs to show some more toughness. As usual, he got totally pushed around on both sides of the floor in both games. He didn’t do a great job rebounding or scoring. He really needs to practice hard or he is in serious danger of losing his starting spot to Jorts.

Porter played tough against K. State and had a good game for him. But he wasn’t up for WVU – too many typical Porter turnovers from the start.

Liggins looked really good and showed why he should be playing the point. I can’t wait until Liggins gets comfortable in the offensive scheme. He has shown some flashes of great 1-on-1 moves that I can’t wait to see get worked into his normal play. I love his court vision, especially on the break, and his height is a huge help to making passes into the post. Glad he decided that he wanted to play. Hopefully we won’t have any repeats of that. Hopefully by postseason time, he will have quit making “freshman turnovers”.