TAMPA — The name of the game is win and move on now that the regular season is over. It’s a chance for a new life for teams like the Kentucky Wildcats, whose up and down season has even the staunchest of Wildcat fans wondering what’s gone wrong with the program. For at least another 24 hours, however, hope will spring eternal in Lexington because Kentucky survived round one of the SEC Tournament with a 71-58 win over Ole Miss Thursday afternoon.
Kentucky, 20-12, will face SEC regular season champion LSU in round two of the tournament at the St. Pete Times Forum Friday afternoon.
The Wildcats came into Thursday’s game losers of eight of their last 11 games. They looked like they might make it nine of the last 12 in the first half, but they staged a dramatic defensive turnaround in the second half to turn this game into a runaway.
“We probably contested shots a little bit better and we didn’t give up too many offensive rebounds,” said Kentucky coach Billy Gillispie. “When we got a lead — we’ve had a couple of leads this year and we didn’t finish the game out right — I thought we did a really nice job of continuing to defend and getting defensive rebounds.”
This was the best game of the season for Kentucky freshman Darius Miller, whose willingness to look for his shot was the difference in the game. The Ole Miss strategy was to clamp down on the three-point line and the Rebels did it well enough to limit Kentucky to 10 three-point attempts. That left the mid-range game open and Miller showed the initiative that he didn’t have last Saturday in Gainesville when he took one shot the entire game. Miller took nine shots, hit five and scored 12 points to give the Wildcats the scorer they needed to take the load off Patrick Patterson and Jodie Meeks.
Down 38-36 at the half, the Wildcats got after Ole Miss defensively in the second half. The Rebels hit 14-26 of their first half shots (4-9 on threes), but only 7-22 in the second half and only 1-8 from the three-point line after the intermission. Kentucky attacked the Ole Miss point guards, pressuring them the moment they crossed midcourt. Ole Miss turned the ball over 18 times during the game and the Wildcats converted those miscues into 23 points.
“I thought we did a good job in the first half of playing hard on defense,” said Meeks. “They just executed real good. In the seond half, we were more active on the ball and helped each other a little bit more and got some steals and that got us going on offense.”
Kentucky went on a 11-2 run to start the second half and that opened up a 47-40 lead that swelled to 11 when Meeks knocked down the only three of the game for the Wildcats with 12:27 remaining in the game and Patterson got a dunk back the next trip down the floor to make it 56-45. Ole Miss chipped the lead back down to seven on a couple of occasions but a 7-0 run sparked by five points off the fast break from Meeks stretched the lead out to 67-53 to put the Rebels away.
Meeks led the Wildcats with 25 points, most of them coming in transition. Patterson had 14 rebounds to go with his 15 points and Perry Stevenson offered some help offensively by scoring 13 points, five coming from the foul line.
Ole Miss was led by Terrico White with 21 points and David Huertas with 15.