'Come out and show us': Kentucky guard says Dalton Knecht has to earn Wildcats' respect
Forget the 191 points Dalton Knecht scored over the previous six games. The 31 points Tennessee’s star transfer wing scored on Tuesday doesn’t matter. Neither does the 32 he had at Vanderbilt, the 39 against Florida or the 36 at Georgia.
If Knecht wants Kentucky’s respect, he’s got to do it against Kentucky.
“I mean, yeah, he’s been doing what he’s been doing,” Kentucky guard Adou Thiero said during a media session on Friday, “but we’re another team. He has to come out and show us.
“We’re just not going to give him that respect just because of what he’s been doing on other teams. So he’s going have to show us the same thing.”
Dalton Knecht has scored 30 or more points in four of Tennessee’s last five games
Knecht gets his first taste of the Tennessee-Kentucky rivalry when the fifth-ranked Vols (15-5, 5-2 SEC) go on the road to face the 10th-ranked Wildcats (15-3, 5-3) on Saturday night (8:30 Eastern Time, ESPN) at Rupp Arena in Lexington.
He’s looking to extend a run of 30 or more points in four of his last five games, something no other Tennessee player has done before him.
Road games have been Knecht’s speciality, too, averaging 31.4 points per game while shooting 61.5 percent from the field and 47.2 percent from the 3-point line in five road games this season. Knecht has scored 24 or more in all five road games and had 28 in a charity exhibition win at Michigan State in October.
“I feel like he’s a good player,” Kentucky five-star freshman small forward Justin Edwards said. “That’s really about it. We watched (Tennessee) film, but it was more so about their plays. We didn’t really go into personnel.”
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‘He’s a great players. He has got a nose for scoring.’
Knecht was a late addition to Tennessee’s 2023 signing class, committing to the Vols in April out of the NCAA Transfer Portal.
He started the season by scoring in double figures in nine straight games, including 24 points at Wisconsin and 37 more at North Carolina. He then hit a brief lull with just 38 points over five games between December 12 and January 6.
Since then he’s scored 28 at Mississippi State, 36 at Georgia, 39 vs. Florida, 25 vs. Alabama, 32 at Vanderbilt and 31 against South Carolina.
“He’s a great player,” Thiero said. “He has got a nose for scoring. He’ll find a way to get to the hoop and finish or get a shot off. So we just got to find a way to stop that or limit it.”
