Wildcats Roll to 103-67 Rout of North Carolina Central
- KySportsStyle.com
- 5 days ago
- 4 min read
By Hayden Kennedy
KySportsStyle.com Magazine
LEXINGTON -- Kentucky rolled past NC Central 103-67 Tuesday night at Rupp Arena. The Cats improve to 6-4 on the season, but are still looking for their first signature or ranked win.
UK's Jasper Johnson finished the game with a career-high 22 points, shooting 6 of 10 from the field and 8 of 8 from the free throw line.
“I’m proud of Jasper,” Kentucky coach Mark Pope said. “You know he’s trying. It’s a steep learning curve. I think he’s trying to take in all of the information the best he can. I thought his very first play in the game, I thought he had some force downhill which has been a really important part of him. And again, it’s got to translate into better games. It’s no mystery what we have to do. We have to translate some of these things into more competitive games. I’m proud of his progress and his whole heart is in this and I expect big things from him as we move forward in the season, just like all of our guys.”
Otega Oweh and Malachi Moreno also had impressive outings. Oweh finished with 21 points on 9 of 12 shooting from the field, including going 3 of 4 from three. Moreno added 14 points and grabbed seven rebounds. This marks the fifth game of the season for Moreno in double figures.
“I thought he was great.” Pope said of Oweh. “Really only one of the good things we saw coming out of the first half is he had (Gage) Lattimore 1 for 10. And he was pretty much solely responsible for that and it was a guy who averaged 20 points a game and a good player and run a lot of action for him. And Otega kinda took that on and said, 'Hey, I going to make sure we handle this.' I think he’s really trying to rally the guys. He’s trying to show some leadership. You know, he played well on both ends of the ball tonight. I thought Otega is really important for us and he’s carrying a big load. And he’s got to. That’s what you do and that’s your job and he’s going to continue to grow in that and we need him to be great moving forward.”
Despite only conceding 67 points tonight, Pope says his team's defense needs to improve.
“I was disappointed in our defense tonight. I was disappointed with the fouls. I was disappointed with the late gap help. I was disappointed with the on-ball, ball screen pressure," he said. "We need to be way more up the line, way more aggressive then turn the guy around rather than just kind of pick us apart. I felt like our third defender was hit or miss. And they did a nice job spacing the floor where the floor was really overloaded and so you had your third defender just naked on the weak side. And we have to make that play and we didn’t tonight, for the most part.
"So, there was a lot of room for us to grow. We got to clean up the fouls, we gotta cleanup the gap help. We gotta take some pride in keeping guys in front of us. If we are going to be a really good team in competitive games, those are spaces we have to grow. And this group will. You know, I love these guys, we just need to get better there. And we will.”
The win comes on the heels of a disappointing loss to Gonzaga in Nashville. Oweh commented on the importance of intensity, saying, “I mean we lost the last game so we just had to get some intensity back. I’m just trying to set the time. I feel like it kind of starts with me, you know, defensively, having a high motor. I feel like I kind of set the—even my defense because I feel like that sets the pace and the tempo for offense as well. So, I feel like when my energy is high, I feel like we’re better.”
Worry has started to set in for many fans due to the team's slow start this year. Former Kentucky center DeMarcus Cousins took to X (formerly Twitter) after the Gonzaga loss and wrote, “Can’t lie…this UK team has no heart! This is hard to watch.” Many fans at Bridgestone Arena were heard booing the team after the team went down 19-2 early in the game.
On Cousins' post, Pope said, “I have no issue with what he said, in the sense of you're watching that game, you feel like starting with the coach, this problem is completely unacceptable. So I think that as a former player, I'm pissed with the coach too, and that's just all deserved. There's nothing inappropriate about what he said at all.”
Kentucky will host the Indiana Hoosiers this Saturday. The teams have not met since the 2016 NCAA tournament. The 7:30 p.m. contest will be shown on ESPN with Dick Vitale and Charles Barkley on the call.
Hayden Kennedy, a recent UK graduate, is a contributing writer from Lexington.
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