4-Point Play: Kentucky is an offensive 'powerhouse'

The holidays are officially over. It’s time to take down your Christmas lights and put up your SEC basketball calendars — conference play starts this weekend. And it’s a big one for the Cats, Kentucky traveling down to Gainesville to take on Florida in a sneaky-good Quad 1 opportunity. A win would give the program its second on the year and move the Wildcats to 4-1 in Quad 1 and 2 games. The chance to start building a real resume is here. All it takes is a win over second-year coach Todd Golden and his Gators, ranked No. 48 overall in the NET.

How do they get there? Let’s break it down today on 4-Point Play.

Jimmy Dykes doesn’t know how you shut down this offense

The ESPN analyst could sense a beatdown coming from a mile away. And not because Louisville stinks, but because he watched the way Kentucky prepared for that rivalry matchup, the team’s first true road game of the season.

“You could see that they were starting to click, especially offensively,” Dykes said on John Calipari’s call-in show Monday evening.

Then when the game inched along and he saw the way the Wildcats controlled things on both ends, even taking the Cardinals’ best punch in the first ten minutes, he knew this team was different.

“It was a knockout punch as good as I’ve seen in that rivalry — maybe ever in the history of that rivalry. That’s how one-sided it was,” Dykes said. “The balance Kentucky has right now offensively, they’re a hard team to guard. They can afford to have an off night from one of their top five or six guys and they’re still a powerhouse on that end of the floor.”

The scariest part? The Cats still have flaws and kinks to work through. They’re not perfect. Their depth, though, allows them to overcome most of those issues on a nightly basis.

“They’ve still got growth ahead of them, but it was all on display in that Louisville game, how Reeves played, Dillingham, Sheppard — just keep going down the line,” he added. “That’s the kind of depth that makes a season go from good to great, in my opinion.”

Can the SEC get nine teams in the NCAA Tournament?

This is where the real tests start, though. Take away the UNCW loss and the non-conference was an overwhelming success for the Cats. But can Kentucky keep the momentum rolling in a league that could get as many as nine teams into the Big Dance?

“They need that depth because the SEC is the deepest it’s ever been since I’ve been around it. There are eight or nine legitimate tournament teams as we enter conference play according to Joe Lunardi, and I agree with him,” Dykes said. “That would be a big number for the SEC to put in, so they’re going to need that depth they’re going to have to have to win the league or finish in the top two or three. They’re that good.”

The SEC has the third-lowest average NET among all major conferences with eight teams currently projected to make the field of 68. That group? Alabama (No. 5), Tennessee (No. 6), Auburn (No. 15), Kentucky (No. 22), Texas A&M (No. 24), Mississippi State (No. 35), South Carolina (No. 44) and Florida (No. 48). Ole Miss (No. 60), though, is undefeated at 13-0 and now ranked in the AP Poll. The Rebels are trending toward getting in. And what happens with Arkansas (No. 86)? You can never count Eric Musselman out.

Kentucky’s first real road environment

Bless Louisville’s heart, the Yum! Center just was not an intimidating atmosphere. If anything, the home team deserved to shake in their boots considering the sea of blue that took over the venue. Exactech Arena, though, will be a different story. The game is already sold out and the Gators are planning an Orange Out, rolling out brand-new orange uniforms for the anticipated matchup.

Oh, and Florida is actually good, too. Sitting at 10-3 on the year, the Gators are averaging 86.3 points per contest while shooting 47.2% from the field and pulling down 45.4 rebounds per game, second-best in college basketball.

“They’re really good. They don’t have that marquee win, they’ve missed on a couple of them, but I’ve watched them on film and talked to Coach Golden a couple of times, talked to coaches that have played against them,” Dykes said of Florida. “They’ve got a lot of pieces, size. Will Richard has had a terrific start to the season, we know Riley Kugel is a big-time talent, the transfer guard (Walter Clayton Jr.) they brought in is an upgrade. That’s going to be a tough test. That is a very tough road game right off the bat for Kentucky.”

The matchup also means something for Florida as it hopes to solidify itself as a top-tier program in the league, a potential contender for the regular-season or conference tournament crowns.

“If Florida has thoughts of being in that top four or five of SEC play, they are all in on this game, as everybody will be on Saturday, January 6 when conference play begins,” Dykes said. “I expect Exactech Arena to be sold out and loud, it’ll be a much more difficult environment when Kentucky went to Louisville when there was as much blue in the arena as red. That will not be the case.

“We will learn a lot more about Kentucky and a lot more about Florida on that opening Saturday. Florida is good, they’re one of eight or nine teams SEC teams that will make the NCAA Tournament.”

Where things could get tricky for the Cats

Kentucky is tough, but are they unbeatable? Obviously not. Again, we saw the Wildcats fall in a game they should not have lost, but did (thanks, Wilmington).

How would Dykes, a former assistant coach at Kentucky from 1987-89 (among seven other stops elsewhere), look to slow down John Calipari’s group? Well, he knows what SEC teams will try.

“They’ll try to get physical with them. I think Kentucky plays a physical brand of basketball but I do think teams that are built like Tennessee or Ole Miss, Auburn is a very physical team. I had them when they beat Indiana by 30 in Atlanta in a doubleheader back before Christmas,” Dykes said. “That’s what you’re going to try to do to any young team. Cal is always going to have two or three freshmen on the floor, it seems like. That’s the first thing you test with young players: can you handle physical play when I just continue to bang your body for 40 minutes?”

Fortunately for us, this isn’t Calipari’s first rodeo. He does this every year, specifically with the ridiculously young groups. Coming up with a counter is why he gets paid the big bucks.

“Cal isn’t going to be surprised by that, he’s dealt with it every year he’s had a young team. ‘This is exactly how the game is going to be played. Once we get into league play, it’s going to become a fistfight,'” Dykes said. “Will Kentucky hold up in that when they get into a game where the run game isn’t going quite as fast as they want and it’s more of a half-court slugfest? Can they hold up in those games against the likes of Texas A&M, Mississippi State, Tennessee, Auburn, those teams that are older and physical? Those are the next questions we want to see answered by Kentucky.”

That starts Saturday in Gainesville.