Kentucky has been dealing with some major injuries recently. The Wildcats have been without Kerr Kriisa since December, Lamont Butler missed a few games recently with a shoulder injury, Andrew Carr is slowly working his way back into the rotation following a back injury, and Jaxson Robinson missed the Tennessee game Tuesday night with a wrist injury. However, it should be noted that Butler re-injured his shoulder mid-way through the second half against the Vols and missed the final eight minutes of the game.
With the team's bad injury luck, Mark Pope turned to some younger players on the roster to pick up some minutes, mainly Trent Noah and Travis Perry. While these two haven’t put up big numbers in their limited playing time, they’ve helped fill a gap in Kentucky’s rotation.
Well, that was until Tuesday night. Noah and Perry provided some much-needed bench scoring to help upset No. 5 Tennessee. The freshman duo combined for 19 points and five made threes to help propel the Wildcats to a 75-64 victory over the Volunteers. Noah played a season-high 19 minutes in the win, while Perry played 12. Ansley Almanor and Otega Oweh lead the Wildcats with 13 points each, and Koby Brea added 11.
Even in a low-scoring affair, Kentucky managed to hit 12 threes, shooting 50 percent from behind the arc. Tennessee came into this game as the best three-point defense in the country, holding opponents to 26.6 percent. On the season, Kentucky has hit 12 or more threes seven times, including both games against Tennessee.
It was also a huge defensive performance from the Wildcats. For the second game in a row, Kentucky held its opponent to fewer than 65 points, far better than the 83 points per game the Wildcats had been giving up in SEC play. But it’s hard to say if Kentucky’s defense is fixed or if their last two opponents were just bad offensive teams.
We’ll see if Kentucky can keep up its winning if the injuries to key players continue throughout the rest of the regular season. But at any rate, the Wildcats have won their last two games and have a series sweep over one of the top teams in the country. This was a huge win for the Wildcats and a game that Trent Noah and Travis Perry as well as Big Blue Nation will remember for quite some time.