Canadian Press

I was lucky enough to be in attendance for UK’s highlight reel victory over North Carolina Asheville in Freedom Hall. It was a fun one. It wasn’t the kind of win that makes you say to yourself that UK is a championship level team. It was, however, the kind of win that makes you thankful to have top level athletes again.

John Wall has had a lot of big time plays since he stepped on campus, but tonight he upped his game a bit. He warmed up with a couple nice dishes and a mid-range J. He put together a nice first half with 8 points and 5-6 assists, but the second half is where the SportsCenter Top 10 montage happened.

Wall made a point to pound the ball into his big guys, DeMarcus Cousins and Patrick Patterson, and in a one minute series of plays after the under 16 TV timeout, Wall grabbed a steal, lobbed a perfect alley oop to Patterson, then a perfect alley oop to Cousins, then an and one alley oop to Cousins, then another pass to Cousins that led to a dunk, then, before taking a few minute break, one more steal and dunk creating dish to Patterson.

Now, I know that last massive, run-on sentence/paragraph probably is unreadable, I just wanted to make the point that Wall had a bunch of assists and steals, and Patterson and Cousins dunks.

Wall reentered the game with 5:!4 left and put a few exclamation marks on his night, the last of which was a thunderous left handed baseline jam that absolutely brought the house down. The crowd was a bit flat (and smaller than capacity) during the first half, but John Wall would have none of that in the second. Wall then further endeared himself to his fans by intentionally fouling with 1:59 left to allow the mop-up crew to get some additional time. John Calipari said he did it completely on his own. How about that awareness for a freshman?

At the risk of turning these recaps into my twice weekly John Wall pontification session, I have one more quick point to make about his performance tonight. As great as his highlights were, I’m just as encouraged by John Wall the teammate. He recognized right away tonight that this was a game he didn’t need to take over on the offensive end by scoring.

Wall had averaged about nine free throw attempts per game entering tonight, but notice he did not attempt a single one tonight. What good would it have done for Wall to blow by his defender and get hacked on his way to the hoop and take his two shots? Instead, Wall found his teammates and put them in positions to score, and took over the game just as much. John Wall is really just on another level, the kind of level where he can decide how he’s going to impact a game on the fly.

I can already hear faithful Pinkie reader Reality Check reminding us of the opponent, a very poor and very winless UNC Asheville squad, which is a totally fair point. DeMarcus Cousins and Patrick Patterson better be able to dominate to the tune of 41 points and 19 rebounds against a bad team. UK should shoot 52% and hold the opponent to 40%.

However, it is a very positive development that UK turned the ball over just 8 times and forced 19 turnovers. You’ll know from my statistical look at UK that the turnover is one thing that UK must improve upon on both ends to reach the elite level that we all expect. That improvement will come from focused ball pressure on defense and discipline on offense. Tonight was a step forward for sure.

It also is worth noting that even though NC Asheville played Tennessee and lost by 75 (not 37), Asheville center DJ Cunningham compared the ‘Cats favorably to their conference rivals: “Kentucky is much better by far and the sky is the limit, but Tennessee is still a top 10 team.”

UK now faces a stretch of three games that will undoubtedly teach us quite a bit about where this team is right now. UK needs that kind of test and I believe the ‘Cats will respond. They very well could lose a game or two, but the youthful ‘Cats will see the kind of intensity it’s going to take to compete at the highest level. UK has responded well to the tests faced thus far against Miami and Stanford, surviving on talent, grit, and John Wall. I believe this is the kind of team that may fall behind against a quality opponent, but eventually I think they will play up to their level.