After every Kentucky basketball game the CI Stock Report is updated to reflect the team's latest trends based on that contest.
Here's the post-Tennessee update to take Kentucky's win in Knoxville into account.
| 📈 | Johnny Juzang. The freshman wing had season highs in points (13) and minutes played (24). Calipari seems to be gaining confidence in Juzang and his penchant for making some clutch plays should not be forgotten as we head into the stretch run of the regular season. |
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📈 | Keion Brooks. His nine rebounds against Tennessee were a season high. His 26 minutes played against the Vols? Also a season high. Some of that was because Nate Sestina couldn't stay out of foul trouble, but Brooks made the most of his minutes. |
📉 | E.J. Montgomery. Fans would have been justified in at least hoping that he could have built on the Mississippi State game with something of an offensive contribution against Tennessee. But that did not happen as he struggled to find ways to get involved against UT, a good defensive team. Montgomery did chip in with three blocks, but the book on him is to show flashes of potential rather than sustaining quality play and Saturday does not change that narrative. |
📉 | Nate Sestina. Oftentimes this season opponents have just been too quick and athletic for Sestina when he has been on defense. That was part of the problem, not the whole thing, on Saturday. Four fouls in seven minutes was not his finest moment. It has now been six weeks since Sestina has reached double-digits in scoring. |
📉 | Ashton Hagans. Five turnovers continued a trend of playing loose with the ball. Traveling violations in particular have been a problem of late for Hagans. His assist numbers are also dropping as Tyrese Maxey's rise. Hagans was 2/8 from the field. |
📈 | Team defense. Kentucky allowed zero transition points and Tennessee shot 34.5-percent from the field, one of the lowest numbers the Wildcats have allowed this season. After halftime, including in the games most pivotal moments, UT shot 36.7-percent and had no field goals over the last 3:14 of the game. |
📉 | Defensive rebounding. Allowing 12 offensive rebounds to the Volunteers is understandable. That's not a huge number, but because there is room for improvement, because the Vols scored 19 second chance points (almost 1/3 of their total for the game), and because this has been a recurring problem, it's got to be cleaned up. |
