Kentucky has not been as dominant as expected and Kansas has taken some bumps. Both teams have made changes, but Saturday could prove to be one team’s undoing.
Saturday’s matchup pitting the Kentucky Wildcats against the Kansas Jayhawks in Phog Allen Fieldhouse is the talk of college basketball this weekend, at least among games not centered around two individual players.
It’s a game many had circled on the calendar. A rare, potential top-five non-conference clash in the middle of conference play at one of college basketball’s best venues with football taking a backseat to the sports world.
What could’ve been.
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Instead, Saturday’s game is about two teams who haven’t exactly matched those preseason expectations. Both teams are still ranked (Kansas fourth in the AP, third in the coaches’ poll; Kentucky 20th and 19th, respectively) but this isn’t anywhere close to what this game could’ve been.
But it’s still a big game, just for different reasons.
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Kansas enters Saturday’s game having lost three of its last five games, though all three of those losses have been on the road — at West Virginia, Oklahoma State and Iowa State — and they don’t lose at home — 36 straight home wins — so that’s not the concern to look at.
No, Kansas has its scoring to worry about. Over the past five games, the Jayhawks have not scored more than 76 points. Kansas had 10 games in their first 15 where they topped 76 points. Granted, most of those came in non-conference play against mainly inferior opponents, but there’s more to this number than just an increase in competition level.
Every coach likes to shorten up their bench when it comes to conference play. The non-conference is the audition period, then the coach chooses his top guys, sets them free and keeps the leash on everybody else. Bill Self’s leash is incredibly tight on his non-starters, and two of them are potential first-round picks in the NBA.
On the season, here’s the breakdown of Kansas’ top four bench players’ total minutes compared to their minutes in conference play:
| Players | Total Mins. | Games Played | Conf. Mins. | Conf. Gms Play |
| Cheick Diallo | 131 | 14 | 56 | 7 |
| Carlton Bragg Jr. | 212 | 20 | 71 | 8 |
| Hunter Mickelson | 165 | 18, 10 starts | 43 | 6, 5 starts |
| Sviatoslav Mykhailiuk | 249 | 19 | 71 | 7 |
There’s a huge drop off in bench minutes given to Kansas’ reserves and that’s decreased the starters’ ability to produce because of being overused and flat-out tired. Their loss to Iowa State on Monday night showed that.
The Cyclones have been using a shortened bench all year, so they’re accustomed to playing most of the game, but Kansas has only been doing this for the last half of their games or so, a relatively short time turn around and play even more minutes.
Luckily for Kansas, Kentucky isn’t exactly great at defense. Or shooting the ball.
Even though the Wildcats are known more for their guards than their bigs — a complete 180 from last season — they collectively shoot just 32.7 percent from deep, 250th in the nation. But for Kentucky, the Jayhawks aren’t great at stopping the three, allowing 34.6 percent this season, 195th nationally.
But if you ask literally any Kentucky fan, they’ll tell you that this Kentucky team is far different than the one that suffered an embarrassing loss at Auburn two weeks ago.
Can a team make that much of a turnaround in a short time?
Of course they can, but has Kentucky become so much better in that two weeks? That’s what we could find out on Saturday.
John Calipari’s team is 16-4, which is a respectable record, but it’s certainly not up to the Kentucky standards. Things haven’t been great, so now that the Wildcats are on a three-game winning streak, fans are holding onto this for dear life and now clamoring for that “Final Four ceiling” that went out the window a while ago.
Over the past three games, Kentucky has beaten Vanderbilt and Missouri at home and Arkansas on the road. Good wins, but here’s where things get murky in the SEC.
Kentucky beat Arkansas. Arkansas beat Texas A&M. Texas A&M beat LSU. LSU beat Kentucky. Also thrown in here is the fact that Auburn beat Kentucky but then lost to Florida by 32 their next game.
There’s really no telling, right now, whether or not Kentucky has turned the corner. While they’re playing with more confidence, much of that has to do with Tyler Ulis taking over even more.
Ulis is currently on a three-game streak of scoring 20 points or more. The first of this stretch came against Arkansas, where he made just four shots, but he got to the free throw line 15 times and hit 14 of them. Meanwhile, his backcourt partner, Jamal Murray, is still struggling to shoot the ball despite scoring 18 points or more in seven of the last eight games.
Over the last four games, Murray has shot less than 40 percent in three of them. That’s not going to cut it. Not if Kentucky wants to be the national title contender many see them as now.
The dilemma facing Kentucky, especially in this game, is can they get enough from their big men to complement the guards. Ulis is going to take over because he has to. Murray is going to shoot, make or miss, because he has to.
But is Derek Willis, who’s now the starting 5, be able to control the paint? Will Marcus Lee and Skal Labissiere even be able to produce enough to give them a fighting chance in this crucial road game?
In reality, the questions surrounding these teams — are Kansas’ starters just burned out and has Kentucky finally turned the corner — comes down to this game. Even with a month of regular season action left, both teams have a lot riding on this.
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For Kansas, it’s their home winning streak, a chance to pick up a much-needed win and a time to figure out if they’re just in a rut or if they’re something more to this slump.
For Kentucky, it’s getting a critical non-conference win, the type of win that they will not have the chance to get in SEC play unless they knock off Texas A&M on the road (the road hasn’t exactly been kind to the Wildcats) and a chance to show that, yes, they have turned the corner.
Seems like a lot riding on a non-conference game while both teams should be focused on winning conference championships, but here we are.
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