By Josh Ellis

“(Alabama) is playing hard, I’m telling you,” Calipari said. “They’re diving on floors. They were up nine on Mississippi at Mississippi at half. And the game was in doubt until about two minutes to go. Then Mississippi made a basket, they made a couple errors, but it was anybody’s ballgame. (Avery Johnson is) doing a good job.”

More Mychal Mulder

The junior-college transfer played his best game at UK in Tuesday’s loss to LSU, scoring five points and grabbing eight rebounds in his career-high 14 minutes of play. Mulder’s eight rebounds against the Tigers were more than upperclassman Alex Poythress and Marcus Lee had combined.

Mulder’s spark off the bench caught the eye of Calipari, who said on Friday Mulder has worked his way into the three-guard lineup after showing great energy and poise against LSU. Junior guard Dominique Hawkins has not yet returned to practice, so Mulder could likely see another career-high in minutes on Saturday.

“You know, I’ve been waiting for the opportunity to show that I can be trusted on the basketball floor. Just went in and worked hard, and that’s what I feel like I should bring in every game,” Mulder said. “I bring that to practice and I hope that carries over. I want our team to continue to work hard and keep getting better every day and make sure that we keep taking the right steps to become a great team.”

UK’s frontcourt consistency

UK’s frontcourt against LSU wasn’t just bad, it was really bad. Skal Labissiere, Isaac Humphries, Poythress and Lee combined for seven points and nine rebounds in 54 minutes. LSU’s Ben Simmons had 14 points and 10 rebounds in 27 minutes.

Calipari knows his big men are much better than Tuesday’s downpour showed, but until the UK bigs decide to show up on a consistent basis, wins will be hard to come by – especially on the road. Lee said on Friday his five minutes against LSU (before fouling out) was personally one of the most frustrating games he’s ever played in.

“We all have our specific jobs throughout games and throughout practice. With this team especially, when you have one part that’s not doing their job it’s obvious that’s not happening,” Lee said. “That’s what happened last game where our bigs weren’t contributing and it was that we weren’t contributing. That’s something that we noticed immediately.”