KSR Gameday: No. 8 Kentucky looks to bounce back against Mississippi State

Good morning, folks! It’s Gameday here in butt-cold Lexington. My 100-plus-year-old apartment building in the heart of downtown is struggling to keep up. Thankfully, I’ll get to spend most of this evening inside a cozy Rupp Arena with 20,000 of my closest friends. I hope to see you all there. Let’s split a hot cocoa.

Tonight, Kentucky welcomes the Mississippi State Bulldogs to town. Chris Jans’ squad is sitting on a 12-4 record with a 1-2 mark in the SEC. The Bulldogs dropped its SEC opener to South Carolina before bouncing back to down then-No. 5 Tennessee at home, only to lose at home the next time out against Alabama.

Mississippi State’s best player, Tolu Smith, has returned to action after missing the start of the season due to injury. He’s played in four games now and is quickly rounding back into form. He’s averaging 16.8 points and 6.8 rebounds on over 58 percent shooting from the floor. He and freshman guard Josh Hubbard (15 points per game) will draw most of Kentucky’s defensive attention (there’s a joke about UK’s bad defense in there somewhere).

Kentucky is coming off a tough road loss to Texas A&M that saw the Wildcats give up 97 points in overtime. How will UK respond back at home? We’ll find out this evening.

How To Watch, Listen

• No. 8 Kentucky (12-3) vs. Mississippi State (12-4)
• 7 p.m. ET | Wednesday, January 17 | Rupp Arena
• TV: ESPN2 (Tom Hart, Jimmy Dykes)
• Streaming: WatchESPN
• Home Radio: UK Sports Network – 630 WLAP, iHeart Radio (Tom Leach, Goose Givens)
• Online Radio: iHeart
• Satellite Radio: Sirius 119 or 191
• Live Stats: StatBroadcast

Kentucky vs. Mississippi State Odds via FanDuel

Kentucky is currently a 6.5-point favorite on FanDuel, up from the opening line of -5.5. The point total is 154.5 points. According to the analytics, Kentucky has a 73.2 percent chance to win according to ESPN, a 68 percent chance to win according to KenPom, and a 63 percent chance to win according to BartTorvik.

Don’t expect to see Adou Thiero tonight

The sophomore wing continues to recover from a back issue that has dragged on since the end of December. Although Thiero has yet to be officially ruled out, John Calipari didn’t sound all too confident on Monday that Thiero would be ready to go for tonight.

“Yeah, it’s still day-to-day,” Calipari said during his radio show on Monday about Thiero’s status. “He did not practice today, so it’s still day-to-day.”

Kentucky sure could use Thiero’s physicality, defense, and rebounding moving forward. Here’s to hoping he’s back on the floor sooner rather than later.

Listen to Coach O talk about Miss State

Kentucky assistant coach Orlando Antigua shared 16 minutes of his time on Tuesday afternoon to answer some questions about tonight’s game. He breaks down some of UK’s defensive struggles and how they can improve, and also provides some insight into how the Bulldogs play.

Subscribe to the KSR YouTube Channel for press conferences, interviews, original shows, fan features, and exclusive content.

Texas A&M can’t survive against Arkansas

Every Kentucky fan let out a collective groan when they learned that Texas A&M started off Tuesday night’s game ice cold from beyond the arc against a struggling Arkansas team. Of course it would happen this way, considering Kentucky just gave up 97 points to the Aggies and saw them hit a dozen three-pointers. Texas A&M trailed by 14 at the half to an Arkansas group that entered the night 0-3 in league play.

But the Aggies damn near came all the way back and won the game. Wade Taylor IV, who lit up Kentucky for 31 points over the weekend, went out and dropped 41 points against the Razorbacks. He almost willed Texas A&M all the way back, even hitting an off-balance triple with under 10 seconds left to put his team in front by one. But Arkansas’ Tramon Mark, who finished with 35 points of his own, came right back down and stole the game right before the buzzer.

Arkansas wins 78-77. Conference play continues to make zero sense. (No. 9 Baylor, No. 11 Wisconsin, and No. 19 TCU all lost road conference games last night, by the way.)

“Reed & Rob” just dropped

This morning, actually. For those who aren’t aware, Lexington rapper Scotty Frys released a teaser last week for his upcoming single “Reed & Rob” — a shoutout to the freshmen backcourt duo of Reed Sheppard and Rob Dillingham. The song immediately struck a chord with members of the Big Blue Nation. And it’s so catchy it might just be this season’s theme song for the Kentucky Wildcats.

Well good news, BBN. Scotty Frys dropped the full-length version of the song once the clock struck midnight. You can download the song wherever you listen to your music. Scotty has a convenient link here that takes you to all of his links.

I feel like Reed
And Rob
Yeah I’m on my job I feel like Reed
And Rob

New Kentucky trading cards

Reed Sheppard now has his own basketball trading card. This is what NIL is all about right here.

Topps is set to release a handful of  Bowman U Chrome Basketball cards on January 19, with Sheppard headlining the rollout. DJ Wagner and Justin Edwards will also be featured in the collection.

Bowman U Chrome Basketball made its debut during the 2021-22 basketball season to open the NIL era, the first crossover between current student-athletes and Topps in the world of trading cards. And as it should be, Kentucky is eating first.

View this post on Instagram

A post shared by Topps (@topps)