Two Games, Three Overtimes

Kentucky basketball has been very busy as of late. And I'm not just talking about the Cats, but the state as a whole. One night after UK went to Trashville USA and pulled out an OT thriller over Mississippi State, the Cards went into double OT to win an extremely hard fought battle over the Notre Dame Fighting White Guys!!

UK needed double doubles out of Cousins (19, 14) and Patterson (19, 10), and a near triple double from John Wall (18, 10, 8 assists, 3 steals, 2 blocks) to fend off the hard nosed Bulldogs. Give Coach Stansbury and his team credit. They were without their leading scorer who was suspended for the always vague "conduct detrimental to the team." They also only had use of NCAA Defensive Player of the Year Jarvis Varnado for 23 minutes due to foul trouble. Guard Dee Bost stepped up in their absence going for 22 and continually making plays at crucial times. In the end, though, like almost all UK games, UK's talent was just too much and the 'Dogs ran out of gas. A lot of "experts" had this one marked as a loss for the Cats. It always feels good to prove doubters and haters wrong. Fun Fact from the game: MSU is #1 in the nation in blocked shots, UK is #2... MSU had 2 blocks, UK had 12.

To address the MSU fans who were calling and texting DeMarcus Cousins with racial and personal attacks before the game... well you got what you deserved. Stay classy you guys. Way to prove everyone saying you were uneducated backwood j*rkoffs wrong by throwing bottles on the court after the game. You showed us.

Fast Forward 20 hours to tonight's game at Freedom Hall between the Cards and Irish. I just so happened to be in attendance for my annual UL game and did I ever pick a good one to go to. This game was an all out slugfest with UL's Samardo Samuels standing toe to toe with any big man ND could throw at him and coming out on top. It should be noted that ND All-American Luke Harangody didn't play due to injury, but with the mission Samuels was on tonight I'm not so sure it would have mattered.

No one has called SamSam soft more than me. I have used the words gentle giant, snuggie, and huge p*ssy when describing Samuels on more than one occasion, but tonight he was far from any of those things. He shot 19 free throws, making 16, and finished with 36 points. He also fouled out ND's entire frontline (4 players in all). Edgar Sosa did his best to give the game back to ND with errant shots and poor decision making, causing Pitino to pull him in favor of freshman Peyton Siva for the last few minutes of regulation and a lot of the overtime periods. However, even Sosa couldn't give this one away. The rest of the Cards wanted it too bad, and got the win they deserved. Fun Fact from the game: Notre Dame's Joey Brooks played 2 minutes without recording any statistics what so ever posting the ever rare 2 trillion! (For those who don't know a trillion is when a player plays 1 minute recording zero's in 9 stat categories: FG, FT, 3's, Pts, Reb, Ast, St, Blk, TO so that their box score looks like 1,000,000,000. The 2 trillion is even rarer. Credit for this goes stat phenomenon to Ohio State bench warmer and blogger extraordinaire Mark Titus.)

So while the games may have made for long evenings that lead to miserable work days, it has absolutely been worth it. UL takes a BIG step towards getting their tourney invite, and UK keeps on trucking towards a number 1 seed. Now thats Kentucky (the state) basketball!!

Brian "Samuels still only had 6 boards" Reinhart