John Steinbeck’s Happy We Won

Tomorrow, February 27, is the birthday of John Steinbeck, the famous American author. If he were alive tonight, he would most certainly enjoy the application of one of his titles, Of Mice and Men, to this Kentucky team. One may say that, when Enes officially had no chance of eligibility, Calipari fell victim to the line, “The best laid scheme of mice and men/Oft go awry.” Moreso, tonight’s performance against Florida showed further improvement in the aggressiveness department of Darius Miller, giving the Calipari and the entire Big Blue Nation an answer for their continuous cries for Miller to quit playing like a mouse and start playing like a man. Sunday will be another boring day, but at least this week we can finally hold our heads high when we think about the previous night’s game.

– Kentucky took down Florida by a solid, hard-earned 8 points, winning 76-68. Write-ups on the game are everywhere, but UKathletics.com provides great postgame interview videos with Calipari, Knight, Harrellson, and Miller.

– Here are some interesting player tidbits from the Florida side…

Kenny Boynton: On playing against Brandon Knight…
“At the end of the day, I’m trying to get a win and he’s trying to get a win and we’re playing hard for both of our teams. I think he played a great game, but we’re just trying to play hard and do what is best for our teams.”

On the one-on-one match-up with Brandon Knight… 
“It is pretty hard to stop a player coming at you one-on-one, full speed going the full court. The majority of their plays were those one-on-one type plays so you have to try and stay in front of your man and depend on your help.”

Chandler Parsons: On how differently Kentucky played today versus down in Gainesville…
“They shoot the ball incredibly here. The atmosphere here at Rupp Arena is special. They are very good here (at Rupp Arena) and are tough to beat.”

On how difficult it was to matchup with Kentucky…
“They are very difficult to matchup with. They can put the ball on the floor and have guards who can throw it down inside. They have a very good all-around offense. At home, they are very tough. They make shots and their crowd really gets into it. They played well tonight.”

Notice how Boynton respects Knight from their years of playing together(aau) and as opponents(high school). Boynton also apparently learned from John Wall about the difficulties of stopping great point guards. Sorry, Kenny. Chandler Parsons called Rupp “special”. I guess that facial cream from freshman year did not kill all his brain cells, after all.

– Coach Cal shows us that he joins UK fans in his form of reaction to bad play by our guys. He said this when asked about Florida scoring on several in-bounds plays: “I don’t know.  I’ll watch the tape and probably punch the TV.”

– Matt Jones drops some lines on the impact of Reappearius Miller for the team.

– Michael Avery is having a tough time getting noticed by schools these days, and his “future is uncertain.” Wyoming and Texas Tech fans are trying really hard to change that.

– Photo 6/9 here really shows why Erik Murphy’s younger brother committed to Duke recently.

Good.