Montevallo Falcons at Kentucky Wildcats: Game Preview And Live Game Thread

Tonight, the Kentucky Wildcats take on the Motevallo Falcons of NCAA Division II. This will be the second and last exhibition contest for Kentucky this season.

Television/Radio

• TV: FS South/UK IMG
• Radio: UK IMG

About Montevallo

Montevallo is in the Peach Belt Conference, consisting mostly of schools located in Georgia and South Carolina with enrollments under 10,000.

Tonight will be Montevallo's season opener, and this will be the first time in history the two schools have met. Here are some quick facts about Montevallo:

• Received an at-large bid to the NCAA Tournament last year in D-II, it's 4th consecutive appearance.

• The Falcons have a very mature team compared to Kentucky, with 2 seniors, 8 juniors, 2 sophomores and only 3 freshmen. Junior guard Troran Brown is likely to be the star of this year's group.

• Monetevello loses 3 seniors from last year's starting five, but returns Brown, junior guard Ryan May and several significant players from last year including senior forward Silas Mills and senior guard Jarrid Schroeder. Seth Aderhold and Cam Wiehe are the only other returning members of last season's team, and appear to be redshirt freshmen. The other 14 players are apparently transfer students from other colleges, mostly JUCOS.

• Last season, Brown shot 38.6% from 3 point range, and May 47.6%. So 3-point shooting is a major part of this team's arsenal. As a team, the Falcons shot 4.13% from the arc last year.

• The Falcons are picked to tie for second in their conference this season.

Montevallo is a step up in competition from Transylvania both in size and skill, and this team has several players around 6'7" it 6'8" size range, so they won't be as physically overmatched as Transy was.

What we need to see tonight

The season is moving fast, too fast for Kentucky to lolligag around and act like true freshmen. This is Kentucky, where championships are our stock-in-trade. We must expect significant improvement from the Transylvania effort, because serious competition is only days away. I'll be looking for:

• Improved defensive effort. Last week, the Wildcats were way too passive in their defense, and their fundamentals were quite poor.

• Continued development of the Dribble Drive Motion. We saw quite a bit of it last game, and some very satisfactory sharing of the ball. We need to see sharper execution tonight.

• Alex Poythress to step up and play like a man. Enough said.

• We won't see Andrew Harrison tonight. That stinks. He needs to get into games.

• More communication on the court.

• Many more fast breaks. We hardly had any in the last game.

This is the last exhibition game for the Wildcats. On Friday, the season begins in earnest against UNC Asheville, and we are just three games away from the Michigan St. spartans in the State Farm Champions Classic on Tuesday, November 12th in Chicago.