By Keith Taylor
Kentucky Today
Quade Green isn’t taking Kentucky’s first trip to West Virginia in more than four decades lightly.
“We gotta win this game,” the Kentucky freshman guard said Friday. “This is a must-win game for us because we’ve been losing. Everybody is doubting us, so we gotta punch them in their mouth.”
The Wildcats (15-5, 5-3 Southeastern Conference) will be looking to regain their status as one of the Top 25 teams in the nation with a win over the seventh-ranked Mountaineers. Kentucky has won nine of the last 10 games against West Virginia, (16-4, 5-3 Big 12) but hasn’t played in Morgantown since posting a 106-100 victory over Mountaineers on Dec. 7, 1970.
“We probably have the challenge of challenges, playing who we’re playing, and how they’re playing, on their court where they just don’t lose,” Calipari said. “I’m excited for the challenge and I’m excited for our team to see where we are right now. And thank goodness we’re still in January, we still have a solid month-and-a-half to get this thing right.”
Kentucky hasn’t had much success since conference play began on New Year’s Eve. The Wildcats lost three of five games during a two-week span, including back-to-back setbacks to South Carolina and Florida, respectively. The Wildcats ended a two-game losing streak with a 78-65 victory over Mississippi State earlier this week.
Like Green, Kentucky freshman Hamidou Diallo sees the visit to neighboring West Virginia as an opportunity to regain respect and gain more confidence for the remainder of the season.
“This is a big game for us as a team,” Diallo said. “It’s a big game for us as a whole unit and we just gotta go out there and leave it all out there on the floor. Losing isn’t a fun feeling, so we just gotta make sure that when we’re out there we know that we have an agenda, and that agenda is to win.”
Kentucky coach John Calipari is taking a more realistic approach to annual the SEC-Big 12 Challenge and said the contest will serve as a mid-season measuring stick for his squad.
“This is only a big game if we win, then it’s a huge game,” he said. “But short of that it’s the next game and it’s not even in our league. It’s going to be a hard game. But it’s not a must game. And I would say that Bob Huggins is saying the same thing. It’s going to be a
hard game, but it’s not in our league. If they win it, it’s a big game for them. If we win it, it’s a big game for us.”
Overall, the Wildcats are 2-2 in road games this season and all four games have been against conference foes. Kentucky has lost two of its past three road encounters, including a 76-68 setback at South Carolina more than a week ago. Although losses, Diallo said setbacks at Tennessee and South Carolina have helped prepare the Wildcats for the task at hand.
“It’s going to be really loud and really active and a lot of hatred towards us once we walk in the arena,” Diallo said. “So we just gotta stay together and really try to dig in and listen and be able to relay calls and be able to speak to each other on the court.
“We gotta dig in, talk to each other and make sure that we’re together. It’s going to be 15, 20 of us, maybe, on the bench and on the court and we just all gotta be for each other at that moment.”
The Mountaineers were ranked as high as No. 2 earlier this month, but have lost two of their past three contests, including an 82-73 loss at Texas Christian University earlier this week. Despite the recent slide, Calipari knows what to expect against Bob Huggins’ squad.
“West Virginia is really good,” Calipari said. “They’re a veteran team. Really physical. Defensively, press, disrupt, deny. They’re a top-five team. I know there are some other teams that may be ranked above them, but I’m going to tell you, in a one-game contest, they’re hard to beat.”
In an effort to get his own team back on track, Calipari has tweaked his lineup and has inserted a rotation to keep his team rested and give Jarred Vanderbilt a chance to become more comfortable in the court, especially on offense.
“You don’t want anybody playing more than 30 minutes, maybe down to 28 minutes,” the Kentucky coach said. “We’d like to get Jarred (Vanderbilt) from up to 15-18 minutes if he can. We gotta figure out some things offensively for him where he’s comfortable. You have most of the guys playing 28, 27 minutes unless there’s foul trouble or really poor play.”
Gametracker: Kentucky at West Virginia, 7 p.m., Tuesday. TV/Radio: ESPN, 98.1 FM, WBUL, Lexington.
Keith Taylor is sports editor for Kentucky Today. Reach him at keith.taylor@kentuckytoday.com or twitter @keithtaylor21.