After a three-point win against Ole Miss and an overtime win against Texas A&M, the Kentucky Wildcats men’s basketball team came home to Rupp Arena to flip a switch and blow Missouri out of the water.
The 49-point deficit in the Wildcats’ 86-37 win surpassed the total number of points the Tigers scored, and the game was seemingly over before the teams went to the locker room at halftime.
“What kind of scared me coming in is that I knew they hadn’t played great,” Missouri coach Kim Anderson said following the game. “They probably didn’t play with the same pace as they did tonight.”
Fast forward 15 days, and the scenario is very reminiscent of that in early January. The Wildcats have posted back-to-back underwhelming performances against Southeastern Conference cellar dwellers Vanderbilt and South Carolina, and will be looking to get back on track against a Missouri team that hasn’t won since before the two last met.
Freshman guard Namon Wright said the Tigers struggled to execute in the final minutes of the Tigers’ game against Tennessee, which led to a late run by the Volunteers and ultimately a loss for Missouri. But the team’s lack of execution wasn’t a unique occurrence.
On paper, the betting man has no reason to pick the Tigers in this week’s rematch. They’ve been unable to close out tight games against Tennessee and Arkansas, and have relied heavily on an inconsistent three-point shooting game for points on the offensive end.
Anderson said after the team’s loss to the Volunteers that Missouri’s margin for error is very small, and it will be even more so against the National Championship favorite.
“We need to play almost a perfect game to win,” Anderson said in a press conference Tuesday.
So how do the Tigers put up a fight against college basketball’s deadliest juggernaut?
Senior forward Keanau Post commented after the first game that the Wildcats’ size gave Mizzou fits on both sides of the ball, and he could be the solution to that this time around. The Tigers allowed 25 second-chance points in the first game against Kentucky and Post’s size, interior defense and rebounding ability will be crucial if Missouri hopes to cut that number down this time around.
The Tigers have also played noticeably better in front of strong home crowds, as evidenced by the fight they put up against once-ranked Arkansas on Saturday and 35 minutes of strong play against Tennessee on Jan. 17. With Thursday’s crowd likely to significantly outperform either of those, Missouri will be looking to adjust its performance accordingly.
But perhaps the biggest change of tides entering Thursday night will be freshman guard Montaque Gill-Caesar, who missed the first matchup with back issues. Gill-Caesar has since returned, and is playing arguably his best ball of the season. The freshman was 6 for 9 from the field against Arkansas, including 3 for 3 from three-point range, and if he can come close to those numbers Thursday, it will increase the Tigers’ chances of an upset substantially.
The 1954 Kentucky squad was the only SEC team to ever post an undefeated regular season, meaning that odds are the Wildcats will fall eventually. Every metric in existence suggests the Tigers have no shot Thursday night, but it’s called an upset for a reason, right?
