HALF: Reed Sheppard’s mustache wants the Kentucky-Penn halftime score

Today’s halftime report is brought to you by Reed Sheppard‘s new mustache. At the Wells Fargo Center up in Philadelphia, Kentucky men’s basketball leads the Penn Quakers by a score of 39-29 at the intermission.

All eight Kentucky players found the bucket through the first half, led by nine points and seven rebounds from freshman center Aaron Bradshaw. Freshman guard Rob Dillingham wasn’t far behind with eight points but on 3-10 shooting. Veteran forward Tre Mitchell was stuffing the stat sheet with two points, five rebounds, and three assists.

Kentucky shot 47.2 percent overall from the floor and 4-9 from long range, compared to just 39.4 percent overall from Penn on a 2-12 clip from deep. Clark Slajchert fueled the Quakers with 12 points on 6-8 shooting. UK won the rebounding battle after 20 minutes, 23-17.

During pregame introductions, Wildcat freshmen DJ Wagner and Justin Edwards, who are from the Philadelphia area, received a nice pop from the mostly Kentucky crowd. It was the first game back for Wagner after he sat out UK’s previous game due to an ankle injury. Bradshaw, who is also from the surrounding area, made just his second appearance of the season for Kentucky, checking in after the first few minutes.

It was a slow start offensively for both squads, but Kentucky took the early lead and never trailed in the opening half. A layup from Edwards midway through the first 20 minutes of action gave the ‘Cats a seven-point advantage, 19-12. Penn would trim that lead down to two soon after, but a quick 7-0 run from Kentucky pushed the score to 30-21 at the final media timeout of the half.

Kentucky’s lead would balloon from there as “Go Big Blue” chants rained from down the crowd. A 16-2 run by the ‘Cats broke the game open before Penn hit back-to-back shots that made head coach John Calipari call a timeout with under 30 seconds left. Kentucky would fail to score out of the timeout though and Penn would hit a fastbreak layup right before the half to give us our halftime score of 39-29.