More From Maui, Day Three

By Brett Dawson, Louisville Courier-Journal

More from Maui, Day Three
A few odds and ends from UK’s loss to Memphis in the Maui Invitational thid-place game:

-Got a guy who can beat his defender off the dribble? You’ve got a shot against UK. You could blame fatigue for some of the Cats’ shortcomings against Memphis if not for UK’s consistent struggle to keep anyone out of the land. Three opponents here combined for 146 points in the paint.

-Memphis is all over the map. Great for a one half against Georgia Tech, miserable the next. But they wore UK down in the second half the way a great team wears down a good one. The Tigers aren’t great yet, but they’ve got a lot of potential.

-Tubby Smith declared himself “not happy” with his point guard play in Maui. We’ll examine Ramel Bradley and Derrick Jasper in more detail later this week in the C-J.

-Smith talked at length about UK’s defensive struggles, so much so that not all the quotes would fit in a single game story. Here’s an extra: “When you go up to guard the ball, you need to take something away from them. We weren’t doing that. We were stopping five or six feet from the ballhandler. There was some confusion on our players’ part about what we wanted done. That was a miscommunication, probably, on our part.”

posted by Brett Dawson at 9:27 PM