Christian D’Andrea is a microsite contributor and an editor at Anchor of Gold and Nashville Sports Hub. You can complain about his terrible oddsmaking in the comments, or find him on Twitter @TrainIsland.

The first three weeks of conference play have come and gone in the SEC, and we’ve uncovered some revelations about the league. Ole Miss, for example, showed that a weak non-conference schedule camouflaged an emerging team. Florida, who hasn’t played a league game that it hasn’t won by 17 points or more, is every bit the beast they were expected to be. Missouri and Kentucky, on the other hand, have struggled despite talented rosters. What’s less clear is who the best player in the conference is. Several athletes have stepped up this year, some big men like Nerlens Noel and Reginald Buckner to guards like Phil Pressey and Kenny Boynton. They’ll all have their chance to join legends like Shaquille O’Neal, Charles Barkley, Bernard King, and Dan Langhi in earning SEC Player of the Year honors. So far, a surprising player leads the pack as January winds to a close. Ole Miss is 6-0 in conference play, and a big part of that revival has been thanks to Marshall Henderson’s shooting. He’s not the only one with his eyes on the SEC POY hardware, though. Let’s take a look at who is gunning for league honors, and where their odds stand nearly 20 games into the season.

The Frontrunners

As If Enough Hadn’t Been Written About Him Already This Week… (AP)

• Marshall Henderson, Ole Miss (5:1 odds to win POY)  – Well this is certainly surprising – at least to people not named Marshall Henderson. Henderson has been the catalyst behind Ole Miss’ surprising season by leading his team in scoring and swagger. The cocksure shooter has willed Mississippi to a 6-0 start in conference play. He leads the SEC in scoring and his shooting touch has pulled the Rebels out of tight games against Auburn, Tennessee, and Vanderbilt. Henderson has plenty of negatives, though. He’s shooting less than 40 percent from the field and a big function of his game is having players like Reginald Buckner and Murphy Holloway up front to clean up his mess. He’s also an unreliable passer who averages more turnovers than assists from the backcourt. Still, he’s been the focal point of Mississippi’s 2013 revival, and his scoring and ability to come up big in the clutch have made him the POY front-runner as January winds down.

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1. Scottie Wilbekin is probably not the first player you think of on the Florida roster, but he is emerging as a superstar on defense. “He’s always hung his hat on being a great defender,” coach Billy Donovan said about his starting point guard. “That’s always been important to him. Our defense has gotten better and he’s got a lot to do with that. As a point guard, it’s probably somewhat changed our team’s mentality a little bit going out there and defending the way we have.” Wilbekin’s lock-down defense held Texas A&M’s Elston Turner to four points (a season low) on 1-of-10 shooting after a superb 40-point performance against Kentucky. Then, he held consensus preseason SEC player of the year Phil Pressey to two points (a season low) and 10 turnovers (season high) over the weekend.
2. It seems like Florida Gator Erik Murphy has been playing through one injury or another all season long. But Murphy admits he’s playing through some pain caused by a broken rib. “Duke [Florida trainer Dave “Duke” Werner] pads it up pretty good, so it doesn’t really hurt that much when I get hit on it,” Murphy said. “Just trying to take care of it every day. Ice it. It’s getting better. The longer I wait, the better it’ll get. It’s healing over time, feeling better. But it’s not that bad when I’m playing.” The casual observer might not even notice a difference. Murphy’s statistics haven’t dropped off since missing his only game of the year on January 6 at Yale. He’s scored in double figures in each of the four games he’s played since.
3. Kentucky won big at Auburn on Saturday, and coach John Calipari said that he saw something during that game that he’s “been waiting all year for.” It wasn’t necessarily the victory that got Coach Cal riled up. “See, I’m trying to convince them that the wins and losses, they come and go. You’re not going to be judged just by that. You’re going to be judged by your effort, your fight, your scrappiness. At the end of your career, that’s what they’re going to look at. Did you have it or not?” Cal’s corps of freshmen might not have it yet, but sometimes it takes a reminder that many of the Wildcats’ core group of leaders are just 17 games into their college careers and it takes more time than that to develop a cohesive team.
4. Is Arkansas a football state or is there a possibility that fans of the flagship university can support basketball along with their love for football? Mike Anderson was brought in to save the Razorback program with a fast-paced (and winning) brand of basketball, but is it working? There seems to be more questions than answers regarding its current state, but fan support remains an important component to the measure of success. It was, in large part, a portion of the reason John Pelphrey was dismissed from the program. And right now, fan support in Arkansas is dwindling. Is that because of a lack of institutional support or is it because Anderson simply isn’t getting it done? He still has time to turn things around, but how much of a leash he has may be the most important question of all.
5. On the flip side, Auburn sees its fan base growing in large part because of its belief in third year coach Tony Barbee’s ability to win games. A sold-out crowd against Kentucky on Saturday night showed the coaching staff that the fans are behind them and the team. “The excitement around Auburn basketball is the highest it’s been since we’ve been here,” assistant coach Randall Dickey said. And the interest in the team coincides with improved play from the Tigers. Auburn has a losing overall record, but wins over Florida State and LSU, along with a positive effort against the Wildcats, has Auburn seemingly headed in the right direction.

Brian Joyce is a writer for the SEC microsite and regular contributor for Rush The Court. Follow him on Twitter for more about SEC basketball at bjoyce_hoops.

The SEC regular season race is Florida‘s to lose. Kentucky can’t win at home, much less on the road. Missouri lost to Ole Miss, albeit it without its leading scorer. And don’t even get us started on the rest of the conference. The Gators are in prime position to win their first conference regular season championship since 2011. That is, if they can stay healthy.

Casey Prather went down with an ankle injury against LSU on Saturday. (Credit: Stacy Revere/Getty Images)

The backcourt situation has had its share of injuries as Mike Rosario sat out against LSU with an ankle sprain and Scottie Wilbekin sat out three games due to a suspension, but then played through a broken finger on his right hand. The frontcourt has not been any better as Will Yeguete underwent x-rays on his knee for tendinitis. Then, recent starter Casey Prather suffered a high ankle sprain in the first half in Florida’s victory over LSU. After he was sidelined with a knee injury, Erik Murphy suffered a fractured rib against Air Force. Then, he re-aggravated his left rib in practice. Now, we learned that Prather is sidelined for 10 to 14 days with an ankle injury further adding to the Gators’ recent string of bad luck.

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1. The defending national champions are squarely on the bubble. That realization hit the Kentucky faithful hard this weekend as the Wildcats dropped their fifth game of the season in a home loss to Texas A&M. The idea that John Calipari’s team wouldn’t be invited to this year’s tournament scarcely cross the minds of college basketball fans going in to season, but through the first half of the season, Kentucky’s season-opening win over Maryland is their only RPI Top 100 victory. “It’s still early January. It’s going to be another month before this team comes together,” Calipari said Saturday. “I just hope we are winning enough games as we learn to do this.” He may be out of luck. There’s a lot of basketball to be played, but with the SEC’s lack of quality, there are very few opportunities for quality wins left on the schedule.
2. Texas A&M’s Elston Turner has deservedly been admitted to the  unofficial pantheon of “Cat Killers”. He can’t claim the top spot (the belongs to David Robinson and his 45 points way back in ’87), but I can’t imagine that the Aggie senior would be too bummed about finishing behind the Admiral. Maybe he can just settle for National Player of the Week. Singing the praises of a guy who just dropped 40 points in one of college basketball’s most hallowed venues is tough to do without sounding overly obvious. But I’ll try. He simply couldn’t miss. Opponents know that stopping Turner is practically synonymous with stopping Texas A&M, and Kentucky’s collection of athletes still couldn’t him. He made 14 field goals on 19 attempts, and while I haven’t found an official stat for so-called daggers, Turner had plenty of those as well. The Aggies are peaking at the right time, and will hope to carry that momentum through to their home date with Florida this week.
3. In addition to being charged with creating a gameplan to stop Turner, Billy Donovan will be dealing with another injury to a contributor leading up to Florida’s trip to College Station. Casey Prather suffered a lower leg injury in the Gator’s blowout of LSU over the weekend, and the junior swingman is  facing an indefinite (quickly becoming college basketball’s new buzzword) stretch on the sideline. “That is what they are saying right now— a high ankle sprain,” said Donovan. “Those things are tough to come back from and they’re a long healing process if that’s what it is.” Prather joins Mike Rosario (suffering from a high ankle sprain as well) on the trainers table, and while neither injury appears to be season-ending, Florida’s depth in the short term will clearly be taking a huge hit. Erik Murphy’s return against LSU couldn’t have come at a better time, but a six-man rotation isn’t conducive with the brand of basketball Donovan wants to play.
4. Does Missouri really need Laurence Bowers? I can’t imagine that anyone was actually asking that question, but the answer is a resounding yes. The 10th-ranked Tigers were run off the floor in Oxford over the weekend, unable to overcome the loss of their primary frontcourt scoring option. Point guard Phil Pressey finished with as many turnovers as he had assists, stifled by an offense that struggled mightily for creativity and inspiration. Jabari Brown, Earnest Ross, and Pressey combined to miss 13 3-pointers, several of which were forced because of the newly-reinstalled 4-guard offense’s inability to cope with the Ole Miss pressure defense. “I don’t think they ever got in an offensive rhythm and that’s a tribute to how much effort our guys had defensively,” Ole Miss coach Andy Kennedy told reporters.
5. Vanderbilt’s Kevin Stallings doesn’t strike me as coach who would admit to believing in moral victories, but last week’s close call against Kentucky was undoubtedly an improvement for his young team. Any momentum from that effort, however, was quickly extinguished as the Commodores failed to compete against Arkansas, totaling only 33 points for second time this season. The Commodores turned the ball over 25 times and barely reached double digits in made field goals. Stallings wasn’t in the mood to dig for a silver lining. “Well, there’s not a lot to say,” he told reporters. “We got our tails whipped, and I was real disappointed in our play in just about every way.” The Dores’ unfortunately doesn’t have a lot of time for adjustment as Ole Miss visits Tuesday night, Vandy’s third game in six days.

Missouri opened its SEC season with an easy home win over Alabama last night, but it came at a steep price. Leading scorer Laurence Bowers, who missed the entire 2011-12 season with a torn left ACL, suffered a sprained MCL in his right knee after a collision with an opponent. (The injury was immediately followed by a supremely awkward ESPN feature on Bowers’ successful return from injury). CBS Sports‘ Jeff Goodman reports that Bowers will be held out of the next two games before being re-evaluated by the Tigers’ medical staff.

Bowers has exceeded expectations in his return from an ACL tear.

Behind point guard Phil Pressey, Bowers has been Missouri’s most important player this season. He isn’t the most physically imposing post presence, but he returned from his medical redshirt season with a more well-rounded game, capable of extending out to the perimeter and knock down jump shots. In a well-balanced starting frontcourt, he provides the skill that meshes so well with Alex Oriakhi’s brawn. The temporary loss of Bowers will expose the Tigers’ lack of depth down low, but Frank Haith proved last season that he has no problems running a system wholly (or largely) dependent on perimeter options. This year’s team has plenty of pieces in the backcourt, but the majority of Bowers’ scoring responsibility should fall on transfer Jabari Brown, who has been lights-out after qualifying in December. The former five-star Oregon recruit is coming off a monster game against the Crimson Tide in which he hit five three-pointers on the way to a 22-point performance. The offense will still run through Pressey, of course, but Brown should be on the end of a lot more of the flamboyant playmaker’s assists.

Bowers will certainly miss the Tigers’ trip to Oxford over the weekend (potentially tricky) and their home game against Georgia (probably not tricky). Frank Haith and his team, however, will be eyeing January 19 as the date that they truly need Bowers back at full health, as Missouri travels to Gainesville to take on Florida. We’ll be hoping to see the senior back in action as well, as a potential match-up between Bowers and the also currently-injured Gator’ Erik Murphy promises to be one of the most exciting inside-out battles in SEC play. Let’s hope both guys have speedy recoveries.

1. X-rays conducted on Erik Murphy confirmed that the Gators’ forward suffered a fractured rib last week. Florida coach Billy Donovan is hoping Murphy can return to action soon, but the team’s second leading scorer is listed as doubtful for Wednesday’s SEC opener against Georgia. “It’s in a really bad spot. It’s right by his lat [muscle],” Donovan said. “Any time he raises his arms up or reaches his arms up, there’s a significant amount of pain.” The Florida coaching staff will make a final determination on Murphy’s status on Wednesday. If the starter is unable to go, expect forwards Will Yeguete and Casey Prather to see additional playing time. Yeguete scored 14 points and grabbed nine rebounds against Yale in Murphy’s absence, while Prather came off the bench for nine points and six boards.
2. Missouri received a rather large commitment from JuCo center Keanau Post. Post is coming to Columbia from Southwestern Illinois College where he averaged 12 points and 10 rebounds per game. “As soon as I get there working with the strength and conditioning coach, I think my upside is real good and I can fit in,” said Post. “I know they’re looking for me to be a bit of a scorer, which I know I can do with all the work I’ll be doing in the weight room to get myself stronger. They want me to rebound which I know I can do. I can run the floor very well. The other day when I was up there, Alex (Oriakhi) did a great job of that. I think I’ll put up the same kind of effort. Blocking shots, being there to clean up.” But the post player is seriously a big guy, standing at 6’11” and weighing in at 260 pounds. He will give the Tigers some depth in the post next season after the losses of both Oriakhi and forward Laurence Bowers.
3. Guard Phil Pressey has practically done it all for Missouri this season, but coach Frank Haith doesn’t want his superstar point guard to force shots. “Phil just needs to be Phil,” Haith said. “Phil doesn’t have to be more than Phil Pressey, and I think that he’s hearing that too much, and I don’t like that because I think that makes him feel like he has to do more. He doesn’t. He has to just be Phil Pressey. He doesn’t have to take 25 shots. He doesn’t have to. […] He really doesn’t.” With the loss of guard Mike Dixon earlier this year, Pressey has been forced to play 34.1 minutes per game for the Tigers. He leads the SEC in percentage of possible minutes played at 85.3 percent. Only five other SEC players exceed 80 percent.
4. Yesterday’s SEC M5 talked about the decision of Tennessee forward Jeronne Maymon to take a medical redshirt this season in order to return for a final year of eligibility in 2013-14. Would Maymon’s return this season disrupt some positive momentum the Vols have going? The power forward didn’t want to chance it. “I didn’t want to miss too many games,” Maymon admitted. “I didn’t want to come back and be a distraction and have coach try to put me in there where other guys have paved the way for themselves to play this year. I’m just going to take the backseat and let guys do what they have to do.” Vols coach Cuonzo Martin confirmed that Maymon would likely be able to return from the injury later this month, but both the player and coach agreed that a few late season games weren’t worth risking his health or a full year of eligibility. “I knew at some point, if it got this late, I wasn’t about to put the kid on the court and try to win a few games and he’s not 100 percent,” Martin said. Tennessee carries on without the preseason all-SEC selection on Wednesday in its SEC opener against Ole Miss.
5. Every team needs some experience and Alabama is happy to welcome its lone senior, Andrew Steele, back after six missed games with an injury. Steele scored just two points in his first game back, but the Tide broke a losing streak that included losses in five of their last six games. And perhaps the senior’s addition had a little something to do with the change. “The complexion of our team has changed a little bit,” Alabama coach Anthony Grant said. “We look forward to starting conference play. He affected the game in a variety of ways that don’t show up on the stat sheet.” The youthful Tide started four sophomores and a junior in their last outing, so Steele’s return gives Grant’s squad a leader to turn to on the court.

1. Now that we are done with that joke of a championship we can get back to sports where teams have to beat the best to appear in a championship game. This is not to say that the NCAA Tournament always pits the two best teams against each other because most years we do not have the two consensus top teams playing on that Monday night in April, but we do get two teams that have beaten teams from the same general pool of teams to get there. With college football attempting to move in that direction we can only hope we do not continue to get disastrous postseasons from it.
2. For those of you who were unfaithful and got sucked into the vortex of the BCS Championship Game, Seth Davis and Ken Pomeroy have you covered with their week in reviews. Usually Davis and Pomeroy have fairly similar recaps in that they usually have similar biggest games and upsets, but this week they differ quite a bit primarily because Pomeroy digs a little deeper into the results thanks to his mathematical model that considers the #330 team beat the #185 team to be a bigger upset than an unranked ACC team beating another unranked ACC team. Still both are worth a read if you need to catch up on any action you missed last week.
3. Florida is starting SEC play tomorrow against Georgia, but may be doing so without the services of Erik Murphy, who may be out due to a fractured rib. According to the report (and we aren’t sure how accurate it is), Murphy had been playing with a bruised rib, but further injured himself on Friday when he took a forearm to his chest during practice. That supposedly led to the fracture that was discovered on x-ray on Monday. Given how weak the Bulldogs are and the fact that Florida has a big game coming up against Missouri in less than two weeks resting him would probably be the most reasonable decision, but the school has not decided on whether or not he will play.
4. We don’t think that they will be holding any ceremonies for Jim Boeheim as he takes his last trip through the Big East, but he is still taking time to reminisce at each stop. While South Florida has not exactly been the site of many memorable games for the Orange (unless you consider easy wins memorable) Boeheim took time out to talk about the ups and downs of the conference and his hopes for stability within the ACC. One of the interesting things that Boeheim brought up was the fact that he never seriously considered moving to the NBA. We can’t be certain that Boeheim never seriously considered it although we have never heard any significant rumors, but it is interesting that we have rarely heard many rumors about coaches above a certain age looking at the NBA with the obvious exception of Mike Krzyzewski while many in the younger generation have already been in and out of the NBA.
5. By now we all know that polls don’t matter in college basketball (except for RTC’s poll), but that doesn’t stop Gary Parrish from releasing his weekly Poll Attacks. This week’s “victims” are a writer who ranked Illinois behind three teams they beat easily and the coaches who apparently didn’t see that Pittsburgh played last week. While these continue to be entertaining and the logic that some of the writers and coaches have continues to vex us, we have a hard time getting too worked up over these decisions. Now if these decisions affected who played for the championship that might be another matter…

Dan Lyons is an RTC correspondent who also writes for Syracuse blog “Troy Nunes is an Absolute Magician.”  You can find him on Twitter @Dan_Lyons76.  He filed this report after Sunday’s match-up between Florida and Yale in New Haven, Connecticut.

Sunday’s trip to New Haven to take on the Yale Bulldogs was supposed to be a homecoming game for Florida senior Erik Murphy, who grew up in nearby South Kingstown, Rhode Island. Unfortunately for Murphy’s New England-based friends and family, he was sidelined with bruised ribs after an injury in practice. Luckily for Gator fans, who flocked to Payne Whitney Gymnasium in what was deemed a sellout by Yale, fellow senior Kenny Boynton put on an incredible performance from deep, sinking 8-of-10 three pointers and finishing with 28 points, tying a career-high. Boynton’s 23-point second half also broke him out of a personal slump, clinching a 79-58 win for Florida against a scrappy-if-overmatched Yale team looking to win back its home court.

Florida guard Kenny Boynton broke Lee Humphrey’s school record for made three-pointers by hitting eight shots on Sunday against Yale. Boynton now has 289 made threes in his career.

From the opening tip, Yale tried to run with Florida, which led to a sloppy and frenetic first half.  The Bulldogs did a decent job breaking the Gator press early, often using center Jeremiah Kreisberg at the half-court line to advance the ball.  However, Florida’s length disrupted Yale’s half-court sets, leading to nine first half turnovers for the Bulldogs. Yale was able to stick around for the first 15 minutes of the game, in large part due to success on the boards where they edged the Gators by one in the first half. Florida also struggled to score outside of the paint early on, and only led by one point with just over five minutes remaining in the half.  Despite keeping the game close, Yale was never able to get its own offense going, shooting 9-of-25 in the first half, and eventually Florida’s star guards took over. The Gators closed the half on a 14-3 run, spurred by a late three-pointer by Boynton, and three successful free throws from freshman Michael Frazier II, who was fouled while shooting a three of his own.

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1. The biggest news of the weekend came with the announcement that Tennessee forward Jeronne Maymon will redshirt for the 2012-13 season. Maymon intends to give his left knee time to recuperate so that he can make a full return to the court in 2013-14. “It’s really tough to know that I can’t be on the court with my teammates this season,” Maymon said. “But I have confidence in them, just like I have confidence in these coaches and our medical staff. I know this is in my best interest, and I am going to work incredibly hard to come back as an even better player and teammate next season. I love Tennessee.” Maymon averaged 12.7 points and 8.1 rebounds per game last season, and would have been a huge boost to a struggling offense that has put up point totals of 36 and 38 points already this year. He led the team last year in effective field goal percentage at 55.8 percent, and the Vols could certainly use a low post threat to help out sophomore forward Jarnell Stokes. Maybe next year will be the year, assuming Stokes decides to suit up one more season in Knoxville.
2. Another SEC school lost one of its top scorers over the weekend as well. South Carolina guard LaShay Page has been ruled academically ineligible because of what Gamecocks coach Frank Martin is calling an “academic glitch.” Page is the team’s second leading scorer at 11.7 points per game. Similar to Tennessee, USC has not exactly put on a clinic on the offensive end this season, so any personnel losses hurt — Page took over 30 percent of the Gamecocks’ shots, so he won’t be easy to replace even though he wasn’t exactly the most efficient scorer with a 41.9% effective field goal rate. The backcourt should get somewhat of a boost with guard Bruce Ellington’s return from the football field and freshman Michael Carrera’s return from injury, but Page’s loss will no doubt be a huge blow for a team on the upswing.
3. Florida forward Erik Murphy is out again, this time missing Sunday’s game against Yale because of bruised ribs sustained in practice. Murphy will undergo x-rays to determine if any further damage has been done when the team returns to Gainesville on Monday. “It’s tough for us and certainly disappointing for him,” Florida coach Billy Donovan said. Murphy averages 12.1 points and 4.7 rebounds per game, and is the most offensively efficient player on the Gators’ roster (fifth in the nation). Though Murphy was surely missed on the court against the Bulldogs, this is especially disappointing because the game was somewhat of a homecoming for the senior. He grew up about an hour from the Yale campus in Kingstown, Rhode Island.
4. This season hasn’t exactly gone as planned for John Calipari and UK, but next season could be his most talented roster yet. And that’s without knowing which of his current superstars will return. Kentucky received another commitment from a high school senior over the weekend, the number one rated center in the country, Dakari Johnson. Coach Cal is waiting on decisions from another pair of high schoolers (Julius Randle and Andrew Wiggins), of which he will likely land one. Once finalized, some are calling this the greatest recruiting class of all-time. Not just at Kentucky, which would be quite the feat since Cal has been at the helm, but the best anywhere at any time. That’s impressive, but think of the talent that could return to help lead this group of fab freshmen. Kentucky could end up with a collection of starters in 2012-13 who may be sitting on the bench to make room for a new group of starters in 2013-14. Could be an interesting dynamic, but Calipari has made it work before.
5. Speaking of super recruit Andrew Wiggins, after a string of top ranked recruits selecting the Wildcats, could Calipari and Kentucky actually lose a recruit? It seems so. Evan Daniels, Fox recruiting analyst, thinks Wiggins will choose the Seminoles of Florida State over the stacked Wildcats. The number of available shots in a loaded Wildcats’ lineup could be a factor in Wiggins’ decision. The Wildcats will likely play similar to last season, where minutes and shots are spread fairly evenly among six to eight talented players. If Wiggins wants the ball in his hands, then Lexington may not be the spot for him.

1. Florida did a lot of things right in its match-up with Arizona over the weekend. Mike Rosario had his best game as a Gator, Erik Murphy found his scoring touch again, and the team defense looked ferocious at times. However, 38 minutes of a performance wasn’t good enough as the last two minutes saw the Gators give away the game through a comedy of errors, with Kenny Boynton serving as the primary culprit. In addition to two Rosario turnovers, Boynton missed two three-pointers, committed a turnover, and missed the front end of a crucial 1-and-1. Florida appeared to have the game comfortably in hand, but only managed four shots in the final five minutes, allowing the host Wildcats back in the game. “I told our guys at halftime, if we’re going to lose, let’s at least make them beat us,” Florida coach Billy Donovan said. “We beat ourselves tonight.”
2. Missouri will gain a welcome addition to its backcourt rotation tonight when the Tigers take on South Carolina State. Jabari Brown, a highly touted recruit from the class of 2012, initially attended Oregon, but after only two appearances for the Ducks, announced his intention to transfer. The circumstances around the decision remain a mystery, but Missouri fans will quickly forget that if he can help solidify the two-guard slot for Frank Haith’s team in the wake of Michael Dixon’s departure. “I feel I’m ready to jump in, but that’s not my call,” Brown said. “Whatever coach Haith says, I’m going to roll with it. I might have to take on a little larger role. I’m not saying I have to score ‘x’ amount of points. I just know Mike was a great player, so everyone has to step up collectively.” Earnest Ross, Keion Bell, and Negus Webster-Chan have struggled on the offensive end of the court so far, so Tiger fans will be hoping that Brown’s offensive pedigree isn’t just hype.
3. When Kentucky fans see a player make an obvious mistake on the court, they next thing they often see is a replacement Wildcat jogging from the bench to the scorer’s table. John Calipari doesn’t have a very deep stable of reserve options, but that certainly doesn’t stop him from substituting liberally when he sees something he doesn’t like. “If we don’t start changing, we’re going to struggle,” Calipari said. “You either want to change or you have your excuses of why it’s happening. Let’s just change. That’s my thing.” There were some positive signs for Calipari’s squad against Lipscomb over the weekend. Ryan Harrow, starting his first game since the season opener, looked more aggressive and Kyle Wiltjer finally busted out of a shooting slump and even added an unexpected presence on the glass.
4. A road loss to VCU in Anthony Grant’s return to Richmond isn’t too shocking as the Rams are a quality team, but the 19-point margin of defeat is a bit of a surprise. Personally, I give up trying to analyze this team. The lack of frontcourt options has been Alabama’s weakness so far, but when freshman forward Devonta Pollard finally had a game that displayed his considerable ability, the usually strong backcourt couldn’t hold up its end. Pollard came off the bench to contribute 13 points and eight rebounds on 5-of-7 shooting from the field. “This is a tough loss,” said Grant after the game. “We’ve lost three in a row here. When you win your first six, you always say it’s never as good as it seems. When you lose three in a row, maybe it’s not as bad as it seems. I’ve got to go back and look at the film.”
5. The SEC lost another undefeated team over the weekend, though LSU’s loss to Boise State was met with a lot less fanfare. Freshman guard Corban Collins was a bright spot for the Tigers, scoring a career-high 19 points. But the LSU defense wasn’t up to the task, allowing 89 points to the Broncos, including eight three-pointers and 23 free throws. The trip to Boise was the first of three straight road games for Johnny Jones’ team, who will travel to UC Irvine and Marquette before they see their home court again.