Calipari not content with Jones defense
ATHENS, Ga. - Against Kentucky's stingy defense, scoring points can be hard.
That doesn't mean that John Calipari is taking it easy on the top-ranked Wildcats.
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After No. 1 Kentucky dispatched Georgia 57-44 Tuesday night at Stegeman Coliseum - holding the Bulldogs to 34.5 percent shooting in the process - Calipari found plenty of holes to poke in his team's solid defense.
He started with a stern critique of Terrence Jones.
Jones started the game guarding the Bulldogs' Nemanja Djurisic, who had 10 points on 4-of-7 shooting in the first half.
Djurisic entered the game averaging 6.5 points per game.
"He got Terrence pretty good," Calipari said. "Terrence has been lighting people up pretty good here lately."
The Wildcats held Djurisic scoreless in the second half. He was 0-for-2 from the floor after halftime. What, Calipari was asked, was Kentucky able to do to slow his offensive onslaught?
"Take Terrence off of him," Calipari said.
Not every assessment of his team's defense was so harsh. Calipari conceded the strong work his team did on Georgia freshman Kentavious Caldwell-Pope, who entered the game averaging a team-high 14.7 points per game and scored seven on 3-of-11 shooting against the Cats.
Caldwell-Pope, guarded primarily by Michael Kidd-Gilchrist was 1-for-5 from three-point range.
"We put our best defender on him," Calipari said. "We chased him. But he's good. I mean, he's really good. But this is a team where he knows, normally he can get by the guy guarding him and get something to the rim. Here, he's got 6-10 guys down in there and it's just a little bit tougher."
Lamb's new look
Doron Lamb sported a fresh new haircut for Tuesday's game, his return to the starting lineup after a four-game stint off the bench. Lamb had been growing out his hair all season.
Lamb had seven points on 2-for-8 shooting. He made 2-of-5 three-point attempts. But his most buzzworthy contribution was that newly-buzzed head.
"He said he was getting tired of it," teammate Anthony Davis said. "Too much hair on his head, I guess."
Davis was present when Lamb had his head shaved, and Lamb did so over Davis' protests. Davis said he told Lamb, "Don't do, Doron, don't do it."
Lamb ignored him.
"Soon as I saw the clippers just go back and cut a patch off, I just started screaming like, 'Noooo!'" Davis said. "There was just so much hair on the floor."
No kiss, Davis insists
Davis was quiet offensively for much of the night, but still had people talking.
Early in the second half, it appeared to many that Davis blew a kiss to the crowd. He said otherwise.
"They was all talking," Davis said. "Everybody was all, 'You still suck, Davis! How many points you have? How many points you have?' And I was looking at them.
"And then when he shot - I think it was Darius hit a three, or something happened - I looked at him, and he was looking back at me, and I was nodding my head. And then I walked back. I didn't blow no kiss."
Davis finished the game with 11 rebounds and five blocks. He had four points on 1-2 shooting.
New threads coming
Kentucky will sport Nike Hyper Elite Platinum uniforms for next Tuesday's home game against Tennessee.
The silver-hued jerseys have been sold in stores since the start of the season. The on-court edition is five percent lighter than the previous Nike Hyper Elite uniform, according to a news release from Nike.
Kentucky joins the Arizona, Duke, Florida, Syracuse, Connecticut and North Carolina men's teams and the Baylor and Connecticut women's programs in debuting the new look.