UK Rocks Hartford 104-61, John Wall’s 16 Assists Set School Record

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In his preview of tonight’s game, Nick pointed out that Hartford, along with UNC Asheville, would be the weakest opponent the ‘Cats would face all season. I think he may have been right on.

The most memorable part of UK’s win over NC Asheville was John Wall’s UK freshman record 14 assists, one shy of Travis Ford’s all time school record. Against Hartford, Wall broke his own record, and Travis Ford’s as well, notching 16 assists.

The game tonight was on ESPN2, and was so scheduled because ESPN anticipated that this game would be win number 2000. John Wall and the ‘Cats took advantage of center stage in a big way in the first half. Hartford coach Dan Leibovitz recognized that his team could not matchup with a single player in UK’s rotation one on one. Accordingly, the Hawks opened in zone. They were punished.

John Wall scored but two points after a three that opened the scoring, but like in the Asheville game, didn’t need to in order to dominate. 11 of his assists were in the first half, coming on simple slicing dribbles and jumpstops to the middle of the zone, leading to repeated alley oops (eight first half dunks) and threes (eight first half threes). DeMarcus Cousins (15 first half points), Daniel Orton (10), and Darnell Dodson (12 on four threes) were the beneficiaries.

Before I could even blink, UK had a SportsCenter top 10 montage all to themselves and a comfortable 57-31 lead. If that lead wasn’t enough, UK reeled off a 19-2 run to begin the second half to turn the game, sapping all drama out of the game, except for John Wall’s run at the assist record.

John Calipari reinserted Wall into the game with 7:53 left to play with Jon Hood, Darnell Dodson, Perry Stevenson, and Josh Harrellson. Wall had 14 assists, and the explicit goal was to get him two more for the record. The other guys on the floor shot the ball as soon as Wall passed it to them, and Harrellson and Stevenson hit shots for the record, setting of “John Wall, John Wall” chants in Rupp, led by DeMarcus Cousins.

I don’t think there’s much we can glean from this game from a basketball perspective, other than highlights and some experience against a team that switched from zone to man, so I’m going to jump into quick hitters for my remaining thoughts:

-John Calipari made the decision to sit Eric Bledsoe tonight. Bledsoe has been nursing an ankle injury since November and with a weak opponent in town, it made sense to get him some rest and a start for Ramon Harris. I fully expect to see him on the floor on Saturday against Louisville.

-I realize the competition wasn’t the strongest, but how about the play of UK’s two most important wing players, Darnell Dodson and Darius Miller. Dodson was excellent in the first half and really good overall, tying for the team high with 19 points and chipping in 8 rebounds. Darius Miller hesitated on his shot in the first half after missing a couple early ones, but I think Cal addressed that at the half. He came out gunning, scoring 13 of UK’s first 17 in the second half. He finished with 16 points and 5 assists.

-Looking at per minute stats, DeMarcus Cousins is just about the most amazing thing I’ve ever seen. He’ll seemingly barely be on the floor, but he still puts up monster numbers. With his 19 points and 12 assists, he notched his third consecutive double-double, playing fewer than 20 minutes in each game. He now has seven double-doubles on the season, and could make a run at averaging a double-double for the season (he’s at 15.2 and 9.0 right now) even though he’s playing less than 47% of the minutes he could have played at this point.

-DeMarcus Cousins was also involved in my favorite play of the game. After a Mark Krebs missed three with about a minute to go, Ramon Harris went up to grab the rebound and dunk it home. However, he had the ball knocked away from him while being fouled, grabbing the rim as the ball caromed off the backboard and miraculously going in for an and one.

It wasn’t the play itself so much that I enjoyed, rather the reaction of Harris and the bench to what happened. I broke down that series of events like the Zapruder film. The camera went to Ramon Harris, who looked toward the bench with the kind of serious look you make after a truly great play. This wasn’t a truly great play. Then, ESPN showed the UK bench, which was on its feet, laughing hysterically, which I think hurt Ramon Harris a little bit, even though he acted like it didn’t.

The funniest part was that DeMarcus Cousins, John Wall, and Eric Bledsoe were sitting together, with Big Cuz and Bledsoe thinking it was the funniest thing they had ever seen. John Wall was in the middle, not laughing quite as hard, but he noticed that the replay was being shown on the Jumbotron, which he pointed out to Cousins and Bledsoe. They stopped laughing, waiting to see the play again. When they saw it, they just couldn’t contain themselves. Big Cuz was out of out commission the rest of the game because he was laughing so hard.

-The only scary part of the game tonight was John Wall’s leap over the photographer’s on to press row:

Two things on this picture: 1) I love the reactions of the dancers, which range from “Oh my God”, to “Please don’t get hurt”, to “He’s so close to me”, to “I better try to help”; 2) How about the guy in blue sweater getting nailed in the section by the table? This may be the one time where I would enjoy getting the wind knocked out of me.