Anderson: ‘It’s Kentucky’
Hogs, ‘Cats enter Walton game off losses
FAYETTEVILLE — Razorback guards Anthlon Bell and Jabril Durham tried to parrot their coach’s company line that “every game is the same” regarding preparation.
However, a quote that Durham borrowed from Mike Anderson shows even the coach acknowledges for Arkansas that the Kentucky game is special.
The Razorbacks (9-8 overall, 3-2 Southeastern Conference) and the nationally ranked Wildcats (13-4, 3-2) of John Calipari tip off in Walton Arena at 6 p.m. today on the SEC Network (Resort Channel 79)
“Coach A was always saying from the get-go, ‘Every game is Kentucky,” Durham said. “So we play every game the same.”
Except if every game was the same, then Anderson generically would say every game is the same and not “every game is Kentucky.”
During Nolan Richardson’s Razorback run in the 1990s, Arkansas ingrained itself with similar impact on Kentucky.
So whether trying to rebound off a loss, as both the Razorbacks and Wildcats are with Arkansas losing Saturday night at LSU after Kentucky was upset at Auburn, or coming off huge wins as both have before clashing, there is no dwelling on the past nor looking ahead to their Saturday SEC games when Arkansas visits Georgia while Kentucky hosts Vanderbilt.
“It’s Kentucky,” Anderson said simply of the Razorbacks’ refocusing after losing a 76-74 heartbreaker at LSU.
Senior point guard Durham especially looks forward to
it. The former NAIA and junior-college player experienced last year’s losses to Kentucky in Lexington, Ky., and in the SEC tournament final at Nashville, Tenn., but not Arkansas sweeping Kentucky home and home in 2014.
“I was at juco,” Durham said of his 2013-2014 stay at Seminole Junior College. “But from what I heard and what I saw, it (Walton Arena for the 2014 Kentucky game) was a nice atmosphere.”
Nice seems an understatement. Some Arkansas fans still lament that the Kentucky missed desperation shot immortalized with the ball stuck on the Walton ceiling had to be removed making way for the new gigantic scoreboard.
Mementos of Arkansas basketball successes against Kentucky are not easily discarded.
“The fans are more into it,” Bell, a senior earning his fourth letter this season, said.
Anderson expects they will be again.
“I am looking forward to a great, great atmosphere,” Anderson said, noting Tuesday’s start to the spring semester. “Our students have returned back on campus and you can just feel there is a lot of activity on campus and hopefully that transfers to the building on Thursday.”
Arkansas fans have seen their Hogs successful often enough against Kentucky that they aren’t apt to storm the court tonight with a victory like Auburn fans did when their Tigers prevailed at home, but it will be intense, Calipari knows.
“Everybody’s game against us is the Super Bowl,” Calipari said. “The guys who have been here know it. The young guys are finding that out.”
Calipari said Anderson’s teams play intensely wherever they go and inevitably improve as the season goes on.
“From where they were early to where they are now, you might as well not even watch early tapes,” the Kentucky coach said of Arkansas’ last four games since an SEC-opening rout at Texas A&M. “They still defend. They still play hard. But you have a couple of breakdown players (shooting guards Bell and Dusty Hannahs outside and center Moses Kingsley inside) who can go get them (points) when they need them and all of a sudden you are talking about a team that is playing confident.”
The Wildcats obviously aren’t on the roll of last year’s 38-1 team that plowed undefeated through the SEC and sent the gist of its squad to the NBA. But sophomore point Tyler Ulis, 14.4 points and 98 assists, returns along junior forward Marcus Lee (team-high 7.7 rebound average) and senior forward Alex Poythress while freshman guards Isaiah Briscoe and Jamal Murray (team-high 17.7 scoring average) crash the starting lineup with some of the nation’s most heralded recruits for depth.
Arkansa second five of guards Manuale Watkins, Anton Beard, and Jimmy Whitt and forwards Trey Thompson and Willy Kouassi have played their best collective ball the last two games offensively and especially defensively, Anderson said.