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Kentucky Wildcats 83, Dominican Republic National Team 71: Post Game Observations

The Big Blue Bahamas tour continues as Hurricane Wildcat continues to pound Nassau.

By Glenn Logan
Mark Zerof-USA TODAY Sports

The Kentucky Wildcats have defeated the Dominican Republic National Team in a nail-biter by Big Blue Bahamas Tour standards, 83-71. I’ll have a full posmortem later, but I have a date with the driving range today to get some much-needed practice in.

Okay, here are some quick observations:

  • Dakari Johnson has been unstoppable on the backboards, and is playing great.

  • Alex Poythress is a completely different player than last season, and he was pretty darn good last year.

  • Kentucky has two different point-guard looks they can offer you — a relentless attacker like Andrew Harrison, and a defensive pest who sees the whole floor in Tyler Ulis. I can’t tell you how important that is.

  • 3-point shooting was better today, but still not good enough.

  • Karl-Anthony Towns has to work on his defensive footwork, it is getting him lots of fouls and keeping him from making the easy play.

  • I think our zone offense is going to be unstoppable this season.

  • Never forget that we are doing this without two of our better players, Trey Lyles and Willie Cauley-Stein. It’s hard to wrap my head around that.

  • Kentucky’s man-to-man defense is loathsome. Not sure why it’s this bad, but it really is weak. I’ll bet the DR had 15-20 layups.

  • Marcus Lee is much more confident, and it has made a huge difference in his game.

  • Both Harrisons are so big and physical, it’s just … it would be a horror to be an opposing guard. These kids are just bullies, they are so much bigger and stronger than other guards it looks oddly unfair. When they go to the basket, you just can’t stop them. They may miss, but they are getting there and that is that.

    The twins, besides Johnson, might be the most changed physically. They just look like twin Tarzans, and they play like that, too.

We’ll have more later. This was much more of a challenge than the other games, but mostly because Kentucky’s defense right now is so lousy. If it improves even a little, this game isn’t close at all.

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