Scouting Report: Monmouth Hawks

The Cats will return to Rupp Arena tonight for another home game after beating Tennessee State on Friday night. The Wildcats are now 5-1 on the season, but they still have some issues to work through.

Defense remains a major weakness for this basketball team and it is something John Calipari addressed at his pregame press conference. Now the Cats will take another stab at it with Monmouth coming to Lexington. The Hawks will be Kentucky’s final cupcake of the season (ranked 263rd in KenPom) with the non-conference slate starting to wind down. We’ll see if UK can gain some momentum before a very good UNC Greensboro team comes to town on Saturday.

Nuts and Bolts

King Rice was a point guard for Dean Smith at North Carolina in the late 1980s and early 1990s who immediately got into coaching once finishing playing in college. After serving in an assistant role at Illinois State, Providence, and Vanderbilt he landed the head coaching job at Monmouth.

After originally competing at the Division II and Division III level, the Hawks moved to the big leagues and made the NCAA Tournament four times from 1996-2006. King Rice was brought in to get Monmouth back there, but that hasn’t happened despite two MAAC regular season league titles.

Monmouth reached 27-plus wins in both 2016 and 2017, but were upset in their conference tournaments. They saw both of those seasons end with an NIT bid. King Rice is now in his eighth season in West Long Branch, New Jersey and under his watch the Hawks only have three winning seasons. After a 11-20 season last year, Monmouth is off to a 0-7 start this season.

This will only be the second time that these two programs have met on the hardwood. Last season, Kentucky faced Monmouth in Madison Square Garden and came away with a 93-76 victory behind 23 points from Hamidou Diallo.

Out in the desert, Kentucky is currently a 24-point favorite with a total of 147. That’s a projected final scored of 85.5-61.5. On the year, Kentucky 1-5 against the spread. Monmouth isn’t much better, either. On the season, the Hawks are 1-5-1 against the spread. Something is going to give.

Backcourt Breakdown

The Hawks have been one of the worst offensive teams in Division I to start the season. Monmouth is very sloppy with the ball and are woefully inefficient from the field. It all starts with the guard play.

Sophomore Deion Hammond is the squad’s leading scorer putting up 12.9 points per game on just .350 shooting percentage. That is not efficient, but he can attack the rim. He dropped 19 points in a loss to UK last season.

The Hawks do not have another scorer in double-digits. Point guard Nick Rutherford leads the team in minutes and rebounds, but has more turnovers than assists. Ray Salnave joins them in the backcourt and he has been the perimeter’s most efficient scorer to start the season.

Monmouth struggles to score the ball, but they are a really good defensive team. This group does a good job pressuring the ball and creating turnovers. It all starts with their athletic backcourt. They will challenge UK for steals and will be looking for takeaways to create cheap scoring possessions.

Frontcourt Breakdown

In the paint, Mustapha Traore is the squad’s go-to threat. The redshirt junior from Philadelphia leads the starters in field goal percentage (.488) and is very good at crashing the offensive glass. In Monmouth’s perimeter based offense, he’ll mostly be the only big on the floor.

The Hawks struggle to score and have been very bad on the glass to start the season. With defense being their strong point, expect a similar game plan to the one Tennessee State used. Monmouth will run when they have an opportunity, but most of the night they’ll be worried about getting back and playing team defense.

Keys to Victory

• For the second game in a row, Kentucky will be facing a small ball lineup that struggles to score. Monmouth doesn’t have the shooting to space the floor so this should make life easier on Kentucky’s perimeter defense. Kentucky must begin to make strides on that end of the floor.
• Kentucky has another huge advantage in the paint. After being challenge by Tennessee State on the glass, UK should get back to their dominant rebounding ways tonight. Expect another huge rebounding margin for the Cats where the offensive glass will create a ton of extra possessions. Nick Richards had one of the best games of his career against Monmouth last season by scoring 20 points and grabbing 8 rebounds.
• In half-court offense, Monmouth’s defense will present some challenges for UK. The Hawks are very athletic and can keep people in front of them. It will be a challenge for UK’s young point guards. Both Immanuel Quickley and Ashton Hagans must take care of the basketball and run the offense through the post.

What the…???

Just a few years ago, this program got a lot of attention from some of the work its bench was doing. On their way to a regular season conference championship, Monmouth’s bench mob was having a ball creating unique celebrations. They were a hit on social media and even got some attention from ESPN. Here were some of their greatest hits.

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