Kentucky Tops Mississippi State In Battle Of Bubble Teams. It Was A Big One For The Cats.
It was a bubble battle in Humphrey Coliseum on Wednesday night.
Not only did Kentucky keep its NCAA Tournament chances intact, the Wildcats left town with a major addition to their résumé.
Down two key players and with others hurting, UK defeated Mississippi State 71-68 on the Bulldogs’ home court to earn just its second Quad 1 victory and strengthen its tournament profile with just five games remaining in the regular season.
Oscar Tshiebwe tallied a double-double: 18 points and 11 rebounds. Jacob Toppin scored 16 points. Antonio Reeves had 14 points and was 4-for-7 from three-point range. while Chris Livingston scored all 13 of his points in the second half, including two big free throws in the final seconds.
Cason Wallace missed 12 of the 13 shots he took, but he had 11 assists and just one turnover.
Kentucky outrebounded the Bulldogs 38-22 and got 18 second-chance points on 18 offensive boards.
Both teams came into the night very much on the NCAA Tournament bubble.
The latest bracketology update from ESPN had Mississippi State (17-9, 5-8 SEC) as one of the final four teams in the field and placed Kentucky (17-9, 8-5 SEC) as one of the first four teams on the outside looking in.
The result on the court helped the Cats’ case.
Before Wednesday night, UK had a 1-7 record in Quad 1 games, the matchups considered to be the toughest, according to the NCAA’s in-house formula. Of those seven losses, five had come by double digits, and the other two were nine-point defeats.
A 2-7 mark in such games doesn’t sound great either, but beating a fellow bubble team on its home court counts for something, and it also gives the Wildcats some much-needed momentum after back-to-back losses to Arkansas and Georgia last week.
And Kentucky was short-handed again in this one.
UK was playing without key guards CJ Fredrick and Sahvir Wheeler for the second consecutive game. Fredrick, who has started 13 games for UK and is one of the team’s top three-point threats, missed his second straight game with a rib injury. Wheeler, the Cats’ starting point guard until last month, was out for the third consecutive game with an ankle injury. He was sitting courtside with a walking boot on his right foot.
Wallace was also clearly gassed during the second half, once again playing nearly the entire game. Toppin left the court early in the first half with an apparent ankle injury and was limping the rest of the night.
Still, UK pulled off the upset. (The Cats were three-point underdogs in Starkville.)
The Wildcats will have more chances to land Quad 1 victories in their immediate future. Each of UK’s next three games will count as Quad 1 matchups, starting Saturday afternoon in Rupp Arena, where the Cats will host a Tennessee team that knocked off No. 1-ranked Alabama earlier Wednesday night. UK defeated the Vols in Knoxville last month, its biggest win to date.
Next week, the Wildcats will travel to Florida for another Wednesday night game, then return home to Rupp for a Saturday afternoon date with Auburn.
Both of those will count as Quad 1 games. And Kentucky still needs all the wins it can get.
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