Bill Self on Kentucky: "That’s a team that could win it all"

Coming into tonight’s game, Kansas had only lost 15 games in Allen Fieldhouse in the Bill Self era. Kentucky’s 80-62 thumping of the No. 5 Jayhawks tonight was No. 16, the second-worst since Self’s been coach. The Cats’ 18-point win is the largest margin of victory on the road against an AP Top-5 team in program history. If you’re Bill Self, what do you even say to your team after a thumping like that?

“I think the message is, why did we get our butts beat like we did?” Self quipped to start his press conference. “I think there’s a lot of things you can say we didn’t do but there are more things you can say they did. They were terrific tonight. I don’t know if they had a weakness in their game tonight. Transition, first shot defense, rebounding, shared the ball, took care of it, shot it well, got to the free-throw line. They did a lot of things that we didn’t do at all.”

Self: “I didn’t expect Keion to go for 27”

If you had told Kentucky fans the Cats would beat No. 5 Kansas with TyTy Washington only scoring two points, they’d tell you to keep dreaming. With TyTy still looking a little off after his ankle injury, Keion Brooks stepped up and turned in the best performance of his career. Brooks finished with a career-high 27 points (9-16 FG, 9-10 FT) and 8 rebounds.

“I’ll be honest with you, I didn’t expect Keion to go for 27,” Self said afterward. “He was great.”

If we’re being honest, I don’t think any of us expected that from Keion. Self admitted that there were some plays, namely that lob from Sahvir Wheeler in the first half, that Keion made that his guys just aren’t capable of.

“This isn’t being negative. They had real athletes on the court. Their guys got to a certain level and our guys could quite get to that level from an athletic standpoint. We don’t have anybody on our team that could do what Keion did on that lob that Sahvir gave him in the first half. We got one guy that can go upstairs as good as anybody but after that, we don’t have guys like that.”

Oscar is “a much better rebounder than his stats show”

Self had plenty of praise for Oscar Tshiebwe too. Oscar finished with 17 points and 14 rebounds, his 15th double-double of the season. It seemed like he had three boards on just one possession in the second half. Even though Oscar leads the nation in rebounding with 16.3 boards per game, Self said he really gets way more when you count the ones he tips to his teammates.

“Oscar is different and we’ve known this all along. He doesn’t get 14, 15 rebounds a game. He really gets about 25 because he keeps balls alive on the ones he doesn’t get that his teammates clean up. He’s a much better rebounder than his stats show and his stats show he’s the best rebounder hands down in the country. “

Thanks to Oscar and Keion, Kentucky won the battle of the boards 41-29. The Cats had 17 second-chance points to Kansas’ six.

“If you’d have told me Oscar and Keion were going to combine to take 7 shots from 15 feet, I would have said, you know what, we’ll live with that. And they just beat us the way we thought we might actually have a chance to have some success. But the biggest thing was on the glass. I don’t think we rebounded the ball at all.”

Experience makes Kentucky a championship contender

Kentucky had four players finish in double figures. All four (Brooks, Tshiebwe, Kellan Grady, and Jacob Toppin) are upper-classmen. Three transferred to Kentucky, although Toppin was on the squad last year. Sahvir Wheeler also had seven points and eight assists. Self said that kind of experience sets this team apart from others he’s faced under John Calipari.

“It makes a big difference,” Self said. “He’s had so many, so many talented guys and so many one-year guys but a 21-year old competing against an 18-year-old, if talent is comparable, experience will prevail. Talent isn’t always comparable but in this case now, talent is comparable. They never would have had Oscar in the past and maybe Sahvir because kids don’t want to sit out…You’ve got three kids out there in the portal that are all experience and then you have Keion’s that’s experienced too. That’s different than what he’s had.”

Combine the talent, athleticism, and experience, and Self said Kentucky’s got the ingredients to go all the way.

“That’s a team that we played tonight that could win it all. They played Auburn at Auburn and those of you that follow Kentucky know, the other day, they were better than Auburn for a vast majority of the game; the score didn’t really indicate it.”