Kentucky vs. Colgate – UK Athletics

On By Littum

Saturday night did not look good for the Kentucky basketball team. The Cats found themselves down by 18 points in the second half against the No. 7 Gonzaga in a de facto away game for Great Britain.

Then things changed. Head coach Mark Pope went to a zone defense and slowed down a Gonzaga offensive attack that had scored 50 points in the first half. The Cats also started playing on the offensive end. In the end, Kentucky would win by a single point in overtime.

What enabled the Cats to rally from a double-digit deficit in the second half? Ansley Almonor thinks he knows why.

“We’re tough. We’re a really resilient group,” Almonor said. “Being down 16, 18 in the second half, most teams would just crumble and give up at that point, but we’re a veteran team and we knew we were better and we just had to go out there and execute the game plan and that’s what we did.”

As for the change of defensive strategy, it was not something that came out of the blue. It was actually something the cats had been working on for a while.

“We practice that a lot,” Almonor said. “In situations like that, when the opposing offense has a good flow, we just throw something else at them to see how they react to it. The execution we wanted to do was confuse them a little bit, slow them down a little bit , ruin their flow and see how they reacted to it. They didn’t react too well, so I think it definitely worked.”

The Cats now turn their attention to Colgate, which comes to Rupp Arena on Wednesday (8 p.m. ET, ESPN2). The Raiders are 2-8 on the season, but Almonor has seen some good things from the Raiders on film.

“They try to shoot a lot of threes, they play pretty fast. They know how to guard, it’s going to be a good little challenge for us.”

Almonor knows Kentucky’s goal is constant improvement, and that’s what the Cats will be looking for on Wednesday.

“Coach tries to preach to us to get better every day,” Almonor said. “It was a big win for us, but every day we just try to get better. Today is another opportunity.”

The next opportunity to improve comes Wednesday night when a Kentucky team coming off a big win faces Colgate inside Rupp Arena.