[SLIDESHOW] Cats top Austin Peay 90-69

The UK men’s basketball team beat Austin Peay 90-69, but they still weren’t pleased with their effort.

Up by 14 points at halftime, UK (11-0) allowed Austin Peay to trim the Cats’ lead to six points before UK went on a 12-0 run fueled by nine points during the stretch from junior forward Patrick Patterson. Still, Patterson said the Cats’ effort wasn’t there.

“Very poor defensive effort, rebounding, communication all that,” Patterson said. “They had a bunch of open shots, in the first half the total play was just horrible on our part.”

Patterson, for his part, finished with 21 points and nine rebounds, but UK head coach John Calipari said he had never seen a “softer” 21-9 performance than Patterson’s on Saturday. Patterson said Calipari told him that he thought it would have been just six points and four rebounds had he not seen a stat sheet.

“My performance on the offensive end wasn’t up to par as what it should have,” Patterson said. “I got some baskets in transition in the second half and did a lot better just running up and down the court hitting open shots.”

Calipari said the Cats’ performance on Saturday was indicative of the way they had practiced during the week. A week where Calipari had called Thursday’s practice the team’s worst. On Friday, Calipari said they weren’t ready to be empowered as a team and that he had to be on top of them to drive them to work hard. On Saturday, they played the way they practiced, Calipari said.

“I think we were so non-competitive this week because of finals that it carried over into the game,” Calipari said. “… Every day we step on that court it’s an experience for us to learn from.”

The Cats fell behind 7-3 early in the game before going on a 17-4 run to take the lead that they would never relinquish for the remainder of the game.

Austin Peay scored the first eight points of the second half to trim the UK lead to six but they wouldn’t get any closer for the rest of the way.

The Big Blue Nation held its collective breath when freshman star John Wall went down at the 17:54 mark in the second half. Wall was going for a ball when he collided with an Austin Peay player and said he felt his knee go backwards. Wall was helped off the court but said he was more scared of an injury to his anterior cruciate ligament than anything else.

Wall returned a short time later and finished with 17 points, six assists and six turnovers. He said the poor practice from earlier in the week was the reason for their performance, but he didn’t think they overlooked Austin Peay.

“We just started out with a bad practice this week,” Wall said. “We had to do an hour of conditioning because we weren’t ready to practice. Some guys came in there like ‘today’s not my day, I’m not going to practice,’ so he made us run. I think that day hurt us because we could have gotten better as a team from working together and things like that.”

The 21-point win was one for the record books on a number of counts for UK. It was the 11th for the Cats and is the best start for a UK team since the 1992-93 season where they too started out 11-0. It also gave Calipari the honor of having the best start for a UK head coach in his inaugural season in the history of the program. It was the 1,999th win for the program and leaves them one short of making history by becoming the first program to eclipse the 2,000-win mark.

Patterson said he doesn’t believe the Cats’ 11-0 record is getting to their head though, and they still have a long way to go.

“We still want to be one of the best teams in the nation,” Patterson said. “We still want to win a national championship. We still want to go undefeated … Day in day out, we just need to improve.”