Belmont Bruins at Kentucky Wildcats: Live Game Thread

Welcome to the live game thread for the Belmont Bruins at Kentucky Wildcats. Today, the Wildcats will begin the last leg of their non-conference schedule starting with Belmont and ending with arch-rival Louisville a week from now. Gameday information can be found at UKAthletics.com

Belmont is a dangerous team, but has been somewhat defanged by the loss of their point guard Reece Chamberlain. But Belmont can still shoot the ball from 3, and you can expect a lot of them today.

Keys for Kentucky:

• Stay at home on Belmont's shooters. Belmont can really shoot the ball from the perimeter, and Kentucky cannot back off of them;

• Defend better. UK has been defending inconsistently, and mostly poorly all season;

• Demonstrate some investment in the game. We have seen the Wildcats play somewhat dispassionately in recent efforts, and to the extent we see passion, it is inwardly-directed. We need to see more of a team concept start to emerge;

• Attack, but remember the open shooter;

• Rebound every basketball. Kentucky is the best offensive rebounding team in the country, and that needs to continue;

• Defend the pick and roll better. This switching on every pick is not going to work against better teams.

This game will give us some idea if Kentucky has made any progress at all in the last week after the North Carolina loss. It is important in the respect that we need to see a team start to emerge from this collection of talent that has both a clear offensive and defensive identity, and an understanding that they must assume specific roles, and stick to them. We haven't see that yet.