LEXINGTON — Antonio Reeves continues his impressive play, scoring a team-high 18 points while hitting 4-of-6 3-point attempts as No. 4 Kentucky improved to 2-0 after dominating visiting Duquesne, 77-52.
“They’re going to be a tough out and I’m going to tell you why,” Kentucky coach John Calipari said of Duquesne. “They’ve got really good guards and they’ve got guys that aren’t afraid to be physical.
“We had two rebounds offensively at halftime. Two. They checked us. They bodied us. They didn’t let — they got almost every 50/50 ball in the first half. And we talked about it,” he added. “But that’s how they’re going to play. But here’s the big thing. They have good guards. Their guards are good. The guys inside, listen, when we played behind ’em, the guy turned and scored. One kid’s 6′-10″.
“So, what I will tell you is, as this season goes on, you’re going to see, one, Keith’s a hell of a coach; but two, you’re going to see that team, because, like the fans here, it’s like what I have to do every year,” Calipari continued. “You’ve got a brand new team and early on they’re going to struggle a little bit and make some mistakes, and then as it goes on, they get better and better and by the end, they will be really — when you have good guards in college basketball, you’ve got a chance. And they got good guards.”
CJ Fredrick turned in another solid effort adding 14 points while hitting 4-of-7 from long range. Sahvir Wheeler finished with 11 points and 11 assists. It marked his 11th double-double of his career.
Freshman Ugonna Onyenso continued his impressive play finishing with nine points and 10 rebounds. He added three blocked shots and has seven total on the season, third-most for any UK players in his first two games:
o Anthony Davis 12 in 2011-12
o Perry Stevenson 11 in 2006-07
o Rodney Dent 7 in 1992-93 (junior season, his first at UK)
Lance Ware had four points, three rebounds and four blocked shots, leading the Wildcats to a total of 11 blocks in the win.
Trailing 8-7, a pair of baskets by Ugonna Onyenso started a 6-0 Kentucky run, giving the Wildcats a lead they held the remainder of the game.
Kentucky stretched its lead to as many as 16 points at 36-20 and held a 38-22 advantage at halftime.
Wallace and Reeves had seven points each to lead balanced scoring. Seeing his first action of the season, Wheeler had six points and six assists.
Duquesne scored the first seven points of the second half before Onyenso got the Wildcats on the board with a layup at 16:21. Fredrick followed with a 3-pointer and Kentucky led by double digits the remainder of the contest.
An old-fashioned 3-point play by Reeves with 10:28 made him the first Wildcat double figures in scoring. His basket and free throw began a 12-2 spurt that gave the Wildcats their then-largest lead at 58-37.
Kentucky eventually stretched the lead to 25 points on two occasions, including the final score of 77-52.
